The Shoulder Season A daily read on New Zealand tourism

Tuesday 25 August 2026

Tourism Holdings reports its full year today, and the number is an input into whether it stays listed

The country's biggest listed tourism operator puts an audited FY26 on the table while a consortium holds the keys to its books, Air New Zealand arrives on Friday guiding to a loss of up to $390 million, a Christchurch councillor wants a national bed register now that the levy is dead, and the Wānaka bus business case shows what a targeted rate has to carry when central funding is not there.

By the Shoulder Season desk

A vehicle travelling along an open road
Photo by Yoann Laheurte on Unsplash

It’s Tuesday, and two of the three listed businesses the industry watches most closely report inside four days, pointing in opposite directions. Here’s what’s moving.

Tourism Holdings reports FY26 today, into a takeover process it has not agreed to

Tourism Holdings releases its audited result and integrated annual report for the year to 30 June 2026 this morning, with an analyst and investor webcast at midday. The company is the world’s largest commercial RV rental operator and, on any measure, the most exposed listed proxy for how self-drive touring actually travelled through the year.

The guidance history is the story. At the February interim the company reported revenue of $477.3 million, up 4 percent, underlying net profit after tax of $29.5 million, up 11 percent, and lifted the interim dividend 20 percent to 3.0 cents. It was guiding FY26 underlying NPAT of $43 million to $47 million at the time. On 29 May it cut that to $40 million to $43 million on continuing operations, and pushed net debt guidance out from below $400 million to $460 million to $470 million. The reasons were vehicle sales rather than rentals: softer consumer confidence and the Middle East conflict hitting RV sales across every market since March, roughly $10 million of adverse currency movement and about $20 million of working capital movement, including inventory held up by the Australian manufacturing closure. Then on 23 July it went the other way, to around $46 million, with net debt at 30 June of $436 million rather than the $460 million to $470 million it had braced for. Late bookings across all markets, a favourable year-end interest outcome and New Zealand vehicle sales at the top of expectations did the work.

That is a company that cut guidance and then beat the pre-cut range, inside eight weeks. What makes today unusual is who is reading it. On 12 June the board granted due diligence access to a consortium of BGH Capital and the family interests of Luke and Karl Trouchet, working to an indicative all-cash price of no less than $3.10 a share. The board declined the consortium’s request to pre-commit to recommending a change of control at that price, said granting access was not a recommendation, and noted it was still forming its own view of intrinsic value. An audited full-year number is the most solid input that view has had all year, and both sides now get to mark their homework against it.

Stat of the day

$3.10

The indicative all-cash price per share the BGH-led consortium is working to, and the number today's audited result gets measured against. (NZX)

Source: NZX · NZX · NZX

Air New Zealand lands on Friday guiding to a loss before tax of $340 million to $390 million

The airline reports FY26 before the NZX opens on Friday, and it told the market what to expect back on 20 May. The guidance is a loss before taxation of $340 million to $390 million, against a first half that produced a $59 million loss before tax and EBITDA of $347 million.

The whole revision is fuel. At the February interim the airline was assuming US$85 a barrel for jet fuel across the second half and expecting second-half earnings broadly in line with the first. By 20 May, jet fuel had spent ten weeks trading between roughly US$160 and US$230 a barrel following the escalation in the Middle East, and the assumption moved to about US$145. That took the second-half fuel bill from an expected $740 million to $980 million, a $240 million headwind inclusive of hedging, with the airline about 85 percent hedged on its second-half Brent exposure and 55 percent hedged into the first half of FY27.

The response is the part the industry lives with. Air New Zealand cut capacity 3 to 5 percent, raised fares, and identified up to $100 million of annualised cost savings with around $70 million of mitigation already reflected in the outlook. Capacity and airfares are the transmission mechanism by which a fuel price becomes an inbound operator’s problem, and they take effect long before a result is published. Friday’s number is confirmation of a hit the sector has been absorbing since autumn. The forward guidance for FY27, and what the airline says about where the 3 to 5 percent came out of, will matter more than the loss itself.

Source: NZX · Air New Zealand · 1News

With the levy gone, a Christchurch councillor is asking for the register instead

Christchurch councillor Nathaniel Hertz Jardine wants central government to build a national bed register so councils can see which short-stay rentals are operating in residential zones without consent. His argument is a supply one rather than a revenue one: that operators take housing meant for long-term residents and run it as accommodation, in zones that were never consented for it.

The timing is not accidental. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has backed a ruling that owners in multi-unit residential buildings need council consent before letting short term, which means a body of operators is now technically non-compliant and knows it. Christchurch is waiting on appeals before it enforces. Enforcement without a register means acting on complaints, which is slow, uneven and lands hardest on whoever a neighbour reports.

This is the part of the accommodation debate that survives the election promise. A levy needs legislation and a government willing to pass it, and as of Sunday no party in government is offering one. A register is a compliance tool that follows from planning rules councils already have, and it is the mechanism that would tell anyone, for the first time, how many beds are actually being sold in New Zealand’s residential zones. Operators who are consented have the least to lose from it and the most to gain, which is usually how these things eventually pass.

Source: RNZ

The Wānaka bus business case shows what a targeted rate is being asked to carry

Central Otago’s council table picked up cross-district bus links to Queenstown again on Monday, which makes the numbers Otago Regional Council endorsed in July worth restating, because they are the going rate for regional public transport when nobody else is paying.

The Wānaka and Upper Clutha business case recommends a skeleton service linking Wānaka, Albert Town, Three Parks and Lake Hāwea, eight trips a day, seven days a week. It costs about $1.07 million a year to run, plus roughly $100,000 to set up in year one. The local share is 49 percent, collected through a targeted rate. The other 51 percent has to come from NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi and is not guaranteed. If both processes go the right way, the proposal goes to ratepayers through ORC’s 2027 to 2030 Long-Term Plan consultation in March and April 2027, and a trial could start in early 2028.

Read that against the week’s other story. A resort district with a visitor population several times its ratepayer base is being asked to fund half of a bus service out of a targeted rate, for a service that begins in 18 months at the earliest, in a region whose congestion is substantially a visitor phenomenon. Whatever anyone thinks of an accommodation levy, this is the alternative arithmetic, and it is the one the district is now working with.

Source: Otago Regional Council · Otago Daily Times

Coming up

That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.