The Shoulder Season A daily read on New Zealand tourism

Friday 14 August 2026

Napier Port lost 23 cruise calls and had its strongest nine months anyway

The port's cruise season shrinks to 55 calls while container yield does the lifting, Hotel Council Aotearoa tells hoteliers to stop fighting the bed tax, the cruise lines name their price in Auckland, AAT Kings moves two South Island itineraries into its 24-max range, and a coroner's findings from Arthur's Pass land in the day-walk market.

By the Shoulder Season desk

A lighthouse on a grassy headland above the sea at Cape Reinga
Photo by Ethan Brooke on Unsplash

It’s Friday, the conference fortnight is over, and the numbers that came out of it are more useful than the speeches. Here’s what’s moving.

Napier Port’s cruise revenue fell a fifth, and the result went up anyway

Napier Port reported unaudited results for the nine months to 30 June on Wednesday, and the cruise line in them is the one the rest of the country has been bracing for. The 2026 season finished in April with 55 vessel calls and more than 88,000 passengers, contributing $6.5 million of revenue. The year before it was 78 calls and $8.3 million. There are currently 50 bookings for the 2027 season, so the port is planning for another year at roughly this level rather than a recovery.

The result went the other way. Nine-month revenue rose 11.1 per cent to $134 million from $120.6 million, the result from operating activities rose 16.6 per cent to $59.3 million from $50.9 million, and underlying net profit after tax rose 27.8 per cent to $29.6 million from $23.2 million. The company now expects the full-year operating result to land around the top of its $70 to $74 million guidance range.

Worth setting the revenue lines side by side, because the shape matters more than the total:

Container growth covered the cruise loss more than seven times over. The part to read twice is how it was earned. Container volumes rose 1 per cent, to 196,000 TEU from 194,000. Average revenue per TEU rose 17.7 per cent, to $439 from $373, on cargo mix, tariff and levy increases and a higher depot contribution. Log exports fell 5.2 per cent.

That is close to flat volume with a sharp lift in yield, and it is the exact inverse of what has been reported all week from the visitor-facing side of the economy, where volume holds and yield collapses. A port can do this because its customers are contracted and its pricing is published. Most tourism businesses cannot lift unit revenue 17.7 per cent in a year without losing the booking. But the question the result poses is still the right one to sit with over the weekend: if your volumes are flat, what is your revenue per unit doing, and did you decide it or did the market?

Source: Napier Port, nine-month NZX and media release (PDF) · Napier Port investor centre

Stat of the day

$439 per container

Napier Port's average revenue per TEU for the nine months to 30 June, up 17.7 per cent on volume growth of 1 per cent. (Napier Port)

The hotel lobby is now arguing that its own guests should be taxed

Hotel Council Aotearoa strategic director James Doolan used AHICE Aotearoa in Ōtautahi on Wednesday to tell a room of hotel owners and operators that fighting an accommodation levy has stopped being a viable position. He put it as understanding the instinct while no longer thinking the industry should pursue it, and said flatly that New Zealand is going to introduce one.

His alternative is a design argument rather than a defence. Doolan wants a national tourism development contribution at a single low rate, applied across every accommodation type including short-term rentals, with the money returned to the region that raised it and spent on visitor infrastructure. Alongside it he repeated the call for a national register of short-term rental properties. The contrast he drew was with Auckland’s accommodation provider targeted rate, which he called “the world’s worst tourism tax”, on the grounds that it charges a fixed amount whether or not the rooms are full or the hotel is making money.

Set that against the trading numbers presented at the same conference. STR’s Matthew Burke gave national year-to-date figures to June of occupancy up 6.3 per cent, average daily rate up 6.9 per cent and revenue per available room up 13.6 per cent, which is simply those two multiplied together. Auckland occupancy was up 9.1 per cent with RevPAR up 13.4 per cent, Wellington RevPAR up 7.8 per cent for the second quarter, and Queenstown occupancy up 14.9 per cent in June alone.

So the sector is asking to be taxed in the first year since 2019 that it has had real pricing power, which is not the usual sequence. The reading is that Doolan has decided the levy is coming regardless of who wins in November and that the only thing still up for grabs is its shape, and that the two design points worth spending the lobbying on are whether short-term rentals are inside it and whether it is charged per room night sold or as a fixed impost. Both of those decide who actually carries it. Operators who sell accommodation as part of a package should also note that a per-night levy lands in a rate sheet that is already being quoted for 2027.

Source: Hotel Management · Hotel Management, STR data · NZ Herald

In Auckland the cruise lines listed what they weigh, and almost none of it is local

The New Zealand Cruise Association held its annual conference at Shed 10 on Queens Wharf yesterday, under the theme of getting from no New Zealand to New Zealand. CLIA’s executive director for Australasia and Asia, Joel Katz, told delegates that this country is competing for deployment not only with Australia and the South Pacific but with Alaska, Japan, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and South America, and that lines weigh operating costs, port availability, regulation, infrastructure, fuel, itinerary efficiency and the overall reliability of the destination. His summary of what New Zealand has to supply came down to confidence, certainty and competitiveness.

Tansy Tompkins was re-elected chair at the association’s annual general meeting beforehand, and her chair’s report to the conference put the hard truth as a fight still to be won rather than one already turning. Tourism and Hospitality Minister Louise Upston and Associate Transport Minister James Meager both spoke, as did Auckland mayor Wayne Brown and Tourism New Zealand chief executive René de Monchy, with Royal Caribbean, Princess, Carnival and Ponant in the room.

Read that list against yesterday’s news and the gap is obvious. Auckland published a ten-year cruise plan on Thursday morning covering berths, terminals, the airport-to-ship handover and wayfinding, all of which are real and all of which sit inside the small share of Katz’s list that a region controls. Costs, regulation and reliability are national settings, and the deployment decision is made offshore by people comparing a Fiordland itinerary with an Alaskan one on a spreadsheet. Napier’s 50 bookings for 2027, in the item above, is the only scoreboard that counts, and it is currently reading flat.

Source: Seatrade Cruise · Seatrade Cruise, chair re-elected · Hospitality Business · New Zealand Cruise Association

AAT Kings puts two South Island itineraries into its 24-seat range

AAT Kings has opened its 2027/28 Australia and New Zealand season, and the New Zealand additions both go into the Small Group collection rather than the coach range: South Island Splendour and South Island Highlights, alongside a new nine-day Outback New South Wales itinerary on the Australian side. The inclusions named are a farm visit with Real Country and an overnight cruise on the Milford Mariner in Piopiotahi. The Oamaru Penguin Conservation Centre joins the operator’s MAKE TRAVEL MATTER experiences. The season is on sale until 30 September for travel between 1 April 2027 and 31 March 2028, with early-bird savings advertised at up to NZ$2,800 a couple on selected departures.

Two things in that for anyone selling the same ground. The first is that a mainstream touring brand adding South Island product to a 24-maximum format, rather than to its full-size coach programme, is the volume end of the market conceding the small-group argument. It also means “small group” now covers everything from eight to twenty-four in New Zealand marketing copy, so the term has stopped carrying information and the number has to be said out loud.

The second is the calendar. The 2027/28 discount is set now and closes on 30 September, which is more than a year and a half before some of the departures. An independent operator who matches that price in the new year is matching a number that was struck to fill a fixed capacity, on a cost base that does not resemble theirs. Better to be in front of the trade before 30 September with a reason to hold rate than behind it in February with a discount.

Source: Travel Weekly · Travel Monitor · AAT Kings small group tours

A coroner’s findings from Arthur’s Pass reach the part of the market that walks for a day

Coroner Alexandra Cunninghame released findings on Wednesday into the death of Rebecca Woolley, a 37-year-old nurse from Christchurch, who died of hypothermia with a contributing spinal fracture near the Mount Aicken Track in Arthur’s Pass National Park on 30 October 2021 after losing the marked route. The coroner urged trampers to carry proper navigation tools before going into unmarked terrain, and DOC issued a reminder the same day about the risks of off-track trips.

The detail that carries beyond the case is the geography. The Mount Aicken Track ends at the bush line, and DOC’s own description of what lies past that point is challenging, largely unmarked and suited to experienced alpine trampers. There is no gate and no ticket barrier at that boundary. It is a change in the ground that reads as the track simply becoming rougher, and it sits an hour or two from a car park on a road that carries a very large number of people who are in the country for a fortnight.

The operational point is about who does the briefing. A great deal of New Zealand’s day walking is recommended at a hotel front desk, a visitor centre counter or a driver’s microphone, by name, to people who will then be alone on it. Naming the point where a walk stops being a walk is a thirty-second job, and the places that do it well tend to have written it into the shift, rather than leaving it to whoever is on.

Source: RNZ · Otago Daily Times · DOC via Scoop

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