It’s Monday, the accommodation levy is no longer anybody’s policy in government, and the rest of the week is results and weather. Here’s what’s moving.
National ruled out the accommodation levy on Sunday, and the mayors answered the same afternoon
National used a weekend announcement to promise no new taxes at all if it is returned on 7 November. Finance spokesperson Nicola Willis put the tourism part of it plainly: “That includes no accommodation levy or bank tax.” Her reasoning was that there is no way to run an accommodation levy without adding to the cost of a New Zealander booking a weekend away. Christopher Luxon said the same thing from the other end, that the party could not find a version of it that would not eventually land on a Kiwi family. Both taxes had been publicly floated by Luxon a fortnight earlier as things a second term might look at.
Three mayors were on the record within hours. Auckland’s Wayne Brown called ruling out the bed-night levy without offering a meaningful alternative deeply disappointing, and said it undermined the Auckland Regional Deal signed in April. Queenstown Lakes’ John Glover called it a complete u-turn and pointed out that the government had agreed to consider the levy in both regional deals. Rotorua’s Tania Tapsell said councils will simply have to keep funding the tourism offering out of rates.
Line up who has asked for this and the size of the reversal is clearer. Regional Tourism New Zealand, which speaks for 31 regional tourism organisations, asked in June for a national levy collected by Inland Revenue and returned to the region it came from, ring-fenced and independently governed. Hospitality New Zealand put a national visitor levy on its election list a fortnight ago. Hotel Council Aotearoa’s James Doolan stood up at AHICE in Christchurch on 12 August and told hoteliers that resisting it was “no longer a strategy”. ACT’s answer, published on 14 August, is the Local Tourism Dividend, a dollar a guest night paid to councils out of revenue the Crown already collects, and it is explicitly not a levy. National’s answer, as of Sunday, is that it will look at how existing mechanisms could support councils with the costs of tourism, which is a sentence rather than a mechanism.
What was not ruled out is worth as much as what was. Congestion charging is already legislated. Fuel excise was conspicuously left alone, with Luxon offering only that it has been a feature of the system for decades. Road user charges stay live. So the charges that survive are the ones motorists pay, not the ones visitors pay. Labour has been broadly open to the levy conversation but has published no policy on it, which makes 7 November the only remaining route to a per-night charge.
For anyone pricing 2027 and 2028 into rate sheets right now, that is the practical outcome. The line item the trade has been told to expect for three years is not currently anybody’s costed policy, and the visitor charge that is still actually coming is the site access charge at places like Aoraki and Milford Sound, travelling through the Conservation Amendment Bill, which the Environment Committee reports back on in November.
Source: RNZ · 1News · interest.co.nz · NEWS WIRE · Regional Tourism New Zealand · Hotel Management
Stat of the day
$27 million
What Auckland estimated a 2.5 to 3 percent visitor accommodation levy would raise for the city each year. That is the number now off the table. (interest.co.nz)
Group and tour escort visa applications move to a new system today, and old drafts die on 8 October
From today, Group Visitor Visa applications, both general and Approved Destination Status, along with Tour Escort Visitor Visas and the General Visitor Visa for ADS free and independent travellers, are made through Immigration New Zealand’s enhanced Immigration Online platform. The date has already moved once, from July, so INZ could finish testing.
The useful new feature is sharing. A Group Visitor Visa application can be shared with other people, including group members and tour agency staff, which is the part inbound operators and their agents have been working around with spreadsheets and email for years.
The part to diarise is the cutover. Applications already submitted on the old form keep processing normally, and applicants can still upload documents and answer requests until a decision is made. Drafts are different. Anything started but not submitted in the old system has to be lodged by 7 October, and whatever is still sitting in draft on 8 October is deleted. If your agent has a half-built application for a February group parked in the old system, it is not a saved application, it is a countdown.
Source: Immigration New Zealand
Air New Zealand is flying its own fuel into Nadi after a contaminated batch
A batch of jet fuel at Nadi International Airport was found to be carrying an excessive electrical charge, and the airlines using the airport have been managing around it since late last week. Air New Zealand, Qantas and Virgin Australia have all been affected. Air New Zealand cancelled one service and moved those passengers to other departures the same day, and put larger widebody aircraft on two services to work within the restrictions. Virgin Australia cancelled two. Some aircraft have taken intermediate stops in New Caledonia and Vanuatu to get home. Fiji Airports has confirmed operational adjustments and safety protocols without publicly naming the cause. Pilots were told the problem could run to the end of the month, though it may clear sooner.
The workaround is tankering, which means carrying enough fuel from the previous port to avoid uplifting much at Nadi. It works, and it is expensive, because fuel weighs something and carrying it burns more of it. It also eats payload, which is why the visible symptom is a cancelled service or a swapped aircraft rather than an announcement.
Nadi matters here for connections more than for Fiji itself. It is a working transit point for trans-Pacific and Australian traffic, and a common leg for New Zealand outbound leisure in the last month of winter. Anybody with clients routing through Nadi before the end of August should be treating the schedule as provisional and checking it rather than assuming it.
Source: RNZ
Sunday’s gales took out flights across seven airports, and the South Island gets rain from Tuesday
Severe winds ran up the lower North Island and across the top of the South on Sunday, gusting to 168kmh at Mt Kaukau above Wellington. Air New Zealand reported disruption at Wellington, Palmerston North, New Plymouth, Blenheim, Invercargill, Dunedin and Queenstown. Wellington Airport had two flights cancelled and two diverted early on Sunday morning. Power went out for more than 650 customers in the Wellington region, more than 700 in Marlborough, around 400 in Wairarapa, around 400 on the West Coast, 300 in Tasman and 200 in Manawatū. The orange strong wind warning for Tararua and the watch for inland Hawke’s Bay were both lifted on Sunday evening.
The forecast for the rest of the week splits by island. Meteorologist Gerard Bellham described the conditions ahead as spring-like, with the North Island mostly fine, while the South Island faces heavy rain from Tuesday and possible hill snow by Thursday.
Two parts of the same industry will read that forecast in opposite directions. It is the last full week of August, the ski fields want every centimetre of it, and a South Island touring itinerary wants none of it. If you are running alpine road transfers on Thursday or Friday, that is the day to have the wet-weather alternative already written rather than improvised at the hotel door.
Source: RNZ
Dunedin is getting 145 rooms and a conference centre in a 1960s office block
Distinction Hotels has confirmed it will take Philip Laing House, the former Government Life Building on the corner of Princes and Rattray Streets, along with neighbouring buildings whose Princes Street façades are being retained, and turn the site into a 4.5 star hotel of 145 rooms with a conference centre. The target is 2028. The building most recently housed Otago Regional Council and Oranga Tamariki offices. It is Distinction’s third significant commitment in the city, after converting the Chief Post Office into a hotel in 2015 and buying Dunedin Leisure Lodge in 2021. Chief executive Duncan Fletcher’s read on it was short: “Dunedin seems to be going ahead. There’s healthy growth in Dunedin.”
Mayor Sophie Barker called it fantastic news, said a new 4.5 star hotel significantly strengthens the city’s accommodation offering, and noted that Dunedin runs close to full at peak and has needed more rooms for years.
The conference centre is the part that changes the shape of the year rather than the size of the peak. Dunedin’s problem has never been demand in February. It is that a city which sells out on event weekends and empties in the shoulder cannot build a permanent workforce on that pattern. Business events are the standard correction, because a conference books midweek, out of season, and for two or three nights instead of one. It also puts a live question over the separate stadium precinct hotel that Dunedin Venues has been assessing with Russell Property Group, and which the Otago Daily Times reported on Sunday is still in play. One city, two hotel proposals, and a decision that just got harder for whoever is holding the second one.
Source: Otago Daily Times · Stuff · Otago Daily Times
Coming up
- 25 August Tourism Holdings audited FY26 results, and SkyCity’s staff consultation closes on a proposal to cut about 200 roles
- 26 August Accommodation Data Programme, July 2026
- 27 August West Coast Tourism Summit, Greymouth, and Tourism Volumes and Flows for July
- 28 August Air New Zealand FY26 annual results before the market opens, July Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates on the revised basis, and Titanic: The Human Story opens in Auckland
- 29 August Crown Princess opens Auckland’s cruise season at Queens Wharf
- 31 August The new runway end safety area rule takes effect, and submissions close at 5pm on the Wānaka freedom camping bylaw changes
- 1 September International Visitor Survey for the June quarter, the general whitebait season opens, and Avani Queenstown opens
- 13 September Auckland’s City Rail Link opens to passengers
- 7 October Last day to submit draft group, tour escort and ADS FIT visa applications started in the old Immigration Online system
- 7 November General election
That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.