The Shoulder Season A daily read on New Zealand tourism

Friday 21 August 2026

Auckland Airport spent $1.07 billion to carry 1.6 percent more people

Auckland's build year buys flat profit and eighteen months of terminal disruption, Queenstown pays a record dividend on its first million international movements, a retired judge finds six deaths at a council campground were preventable, TAIC sets out what happened aboard the Black Cat, and Marlborough shelves the country's oldest wine festival.

By the Shoulder Season desk

Rows of grapevines running away towards a hillside
Photo by Jon Moore on Unsplash

It’s Friday, and two airport results landed a day apart with almost nothing in common. Here’s what’s moving.

Auckland Airport’s underlying profit went nowhere, and the next eighteen months are the loud part

Auckland Airport reported its FY26 result on Thursday. Underlying profit after tax was $309 million, down 0.5 percent on last year. Revenue rose 3 percent to $1.04 billion. Reported profit fell 20 percent to $334.7 million, mostly on smaller investment property revaluation gains. The final dividend is 6.75 cents per share, down from 7 cents.

Passenger numbers barely moved: 19 million, with international up 1.6 percent to 10.5 million including transits and domestic up 1.7 percent to 8.6 million. The airport said airlines pulled capacity in the second half as fuel prices climbed, and that seat capacity ran 6 percent below planned levels across the final four months of the year. Retail income fell 4 percent while airfield income rose 9 percent, which is the shape of a year where the planes kept coming but the people on them spent less.

The number that matters for anyone selling New Zealand is capital, not profit. Capex was $1.07 billion, with $1 billion of assets commissioned including the northern airfield expansion. FY27 capex is forecast at $1.0 billion to $1.3 billion, and chief executive Carrie Hurihanganui said the next eighteen months are the most intensive stage of the build inside the international terminal, with disruption expected in check-in. Guidance for FY27 underlying profit is $290 million to $330 million on volumes described as relatively flat. Inbound operators building 2027 arrival experiences should assume the front door is a construction site.

Source: RNZ, 1News

Stat of the day

$1.07 billion

Auckland Airport's capital spend in the year to June 2026, in a year passenger numbers rose 1.6 percent. FY27 capex is forecast at $1.0 billion to $1.3 billion. (Auckland Airport)

Queenstown crossed a million international movements and paid a record $20.4 million dividend

Queenstown Airport released its FY26 result the day before Auckland’s, and read very differently. Revenue was $87.1 million, underlying profit after tax $34 million, and passenger movements a record 2.82 million. More than a million of those were international movements, a first for the airport. Scheduled aircraft movements totalled 19,678.

The total dividend is a record $20.4 million. Queenstown Lakes District Council takes $15.3 million of it, about $470 a ratepayer, and Auckland International Airport takes $5.1 million as the 24.99 percent minority holder, which means Auckland’s flat year is partly cushioned by Queenstown’s good one. Reported profit was $9.1 million after compensation, interest and legal costs tied to a land acquisition, plus accelerated depreciation.

Queenstown is entering its own build phase. A $65 million airfield programme covering a Code C heavy taxiway and a full overlay of the main runway has started, and chief executive Shane O’Hare said detailed planning for the largest capital works programme in the airport’s history is well advanced. Chair Simon Flood put the airport’s influence at about $1 billion of economic activity. Two gateways, two building programmes, and only one of them growing into it.

Source: Queenstown Airport, ACI Asia-Pacific

A retired judge found the Mauao campground deaths were preventable, and the warnings ran back to 1999

Tauranga City Council released the external review into the Mauao landslide on Wednesday. Six people died when the slope above Mount Maunganui Holiday Park failed on 22 January. Retired High Court judge Paul Davison KC found the hazard was neither unknown nor hidden, and that consultants had identified the landslide risk to the campground and marked it on the slope that later failed, repeatedly, for more than two decades. A 1999 warning called siting fragile holiday accommodation directly beneath those slopes imprudent, and a 2006 assessment estimated a debris flow of the kind that had happened before would put about 30 people in its path.

The finding operators should read twice is the structural one. Davison concluded the geohazard sat at the administrative boundary between the mountain and the campground, that responsibility fell between council teams, that nobody owned it, and that no system required the risk to be recorded, escalated or tracked. A Trigger Action Response Plan, recommended in late 2023 and again in mid 2025 and described in the review as relatively inexpensive, was not put in place. On the morning itself there were warnings from rainfall, from slips elsewhere on the mountain and from muddy water at the foot of the slope, and no threshold, plan or trained decision-maker to act on them.

Former mayor Stuart Crosby, who led the council from 2004 to 2016, said the landslide warnings never reached him and that he has since asked his own regional council for a report on how information moves. University of Canterbury disaster risk lecturer Tom Robinson said the failings are systemic rather than local, and that councils and organisations nationally should treat the report as a prompt to re-examine the hazards they are responsible for. Anyone running accommodation under a slope, and that is a lot of New Zealand, has a filing cabinet worth opening.

Source: RNZ, review findings, RNZ, former mayor, 1News

The Black Cat crew could not get the bilge pump going, and the boat was lost

The Transport Accident Investigation Commission’s interim factual report into the grounding of the Akaroa wildlife cruise vessel Black Cat is now public, setting out the sequence aboard for the first time. The 17.3 metre catamaran was carrying 38 passengers and three crew on a two-hour cruise on 31 January in calm conditions. A crew member noticed the vessel was approaching Archway Rock from an unusual direction and went to raise it with the master. At about 12.12pm there was a bump and a scraping sound. Geo-location data lines up with an underwater rock charted at unknown depth.

What followed is the part worth studying. The bilge alarm went about a minute later, the master found water at the top of the engine, and steering, CCTV, the PA system and the starboard engine and propulsion all failed as the vessel made for a beach. The master ordered the engine-driven bilge pump started and the crew, in the commission’s words, were not confident operating the system correctly and did not get it working. An urgency broadcast went out at 12.32pm, nearby vessels responded, and everyone was off the main deck by 12.40pm without injury. Black Cat grounded again near Nikau Palm Gully at 12.47pm, and was later a total loss after salvage attempts failed and the hull broke up in bad weather. Environment Canterbury declared an oil spill response and reports the environmental impact was minimal.

The commission called it a serious accident in which 41 people were at risk of significant harm. Its analysis, safety issues and any recommendations come in the final report. The interim one already contains the question every skipper-run operation can ask itself this morning, which is whether the crew on today’s roster have actually started the emergency pump, rather than been shown where it is.

Source: RNZ, TAIC inquiry MO-2026-201

Marlborough has shelved the country’s oldest wine festival after 41 years

Wine Marlborough confirmed on Thursday that the Marlborough Wine & Food Festival is on hold indefinitely. The 2027 event had been set for Saturday 13 February and tickets had not gone on sale. The festival began in 1985, when the region had four wine companies, ran uninterrupted for 36 years, 33 of them at Brancott Vineyard, was cancelled in 2021 and 2022, and returned in 2023 at Renwick Domain after Brancott was no longer available.

General manager Marcus Pickens said events across the country are facing an incredibly challenging time and that the substantial investment required to deliver the event in its current format is no longer the best fit with the organisation’s wider responsibilities. Board chair Tracy Johnston framed it as acting in members’ interests. Wine Marlborough is redirecting effort to Sauvignon Blanc New Zealand 2027, an international conference bringing trade and media to the region in February, on the argument that more than 80 percent of Marlborough wine is exported.

Read plainly, a member-funded body has decided a conference that brings buyers is a better use of its money than a festival that brings visitors. That is a rational call for a wine industry group and a real loss for a February weekend that filled Blenheim accommodation. The event had recent support from the Marlborough District Council commercial events fund and MBIE’s regional events promotion fund, which is worth noting given how many regional festivals now sit on the same two legs.

Source: RNZ, 1News

SkyCity opened a convention centre and lost nearly half its underlying profit

SkyCity’s FY26 result, out Thursday, has group revenue up 6.5 percent to $878.9 million and everything below that going the other way. EBITDA fell 44.2 percent to $120.5 million, net profit after tax fell to $18.2 million from $29.2 million, and underlying profit dropped 47 percent to $38 million. There is no dividend. Gaming revenue was down 5.9 percent, with the rollout of mandatory carded play costing $20 million to $30 million of EBITDA on its own, and weaker discretionary spending hitting the June quarter.

The New Zealand International Convention Centre is on both sides of the ledger. It lifted non-gaming revenue and it carried the costs of opening. For the wider visitor economy the centre is the point: a business events venue that fills Auckland hotel rooms midweek and out of season, owned by a company whose gaming base is shrinking under regulation. Chief executive Jason Walbridge is targeting $30 million of annualised savings in FY27 growing to $70 million by FY28, with FY27 capex of $80 million to $100 million and no profit guidance until the annual meeting in October. About 200 roles are at risk, most of them in Auckland, and consultation closes next week. SkyCity has also begun a strategic review of its Adelaide casino, which is the language companies use when they are thinking about selling.

Source: RNZ, Inside Asian Gaming, NBR

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