It’s Thursday, and the industry that produced Tuesday’s insolvency numbers has spent the morning publishing what it wants done about them. Here’s what’s moving.
Hospitality has 13 new recommendations for the Government, and 21 of the last 63 are done
Hospitality New Zealand and the Restaurant Association released the second Hospitality Summit report this morning, the Serving Success 2026 Revision, written up from the summit the two bodies held with Tourism and Hospitality Minister Louise Upston at Parliament on 12 March. It adds 13 recommendations across five areas: employment and immigration, alcohol policy, the intersection of tourism and hospitality, data and regulatory compliance, and skills and training.
Two of the new asks are worth pulling out because they are structural rather than cosmetic. The first is to give industry experience and career progression more weight in employment-based immigration pathways, which is a request to stop treating a decade behind a pass as unskilled. The second is to reframe the object of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act, which is the legal sentence every licensing decision in the country hangs off. Neither is a quick win, and neither costs much either.
The number to hold on to is the completion rate. The 2024 summit produced 63 recommendations, and Hospitality NZ says 21 of them are complete or nearing completion. That is a third in two years, which is either encouraging or damning depending on how long you have been waiting. Hospitality NZ chief executive Kristy Phillips said the first summit “showed what’s possible when our industry and Government work together”. Restaurant Association general manager Nicola Waldren, who was also quoted on Tuesday’s liquidation figures, put the new list in operator terms, saying the recommendations are about the conditions businesses need in order to invest and grow.
Upston has welcomed the report and says she will pull the priorities into a Hospitality Action Plan, on the reasoning that hospitality issues span several portfolios and agencies at once. That is a real diagnosis. It is also the sort of coordinating document that can be published in October and forgotten in November, and there is an election on 7 November.
One caution for anyone about to quote a figure from this. The industry release counts 13 new recommendations on top of 2024’s 63. The minister’s release describes the report as containing 48 recommendations across the same five areas. The two counts were published within hours of each other and do not reconcile, so cite the report itself rather than either media release.
Stat of the day
21 of 63
Recommendations from the 2024 Hospitality Summit that are complete or nearing completion, two years on. Thirteen more were added this morning. (Hospitality New Zealand)
Source: Hospitality New Zealand · The minister’s release via LiveNews
A record 177 entries produced the Tourism Awards shortlist, up from 150
Tourism Industry Aotearoa named the finalists for the 2026 New Zealand Tourism Awards this morning. Entries hit 177 across the 12 categories, beating last year’s record of 150 by 18 percent. Chief executive Rebecca Ingram read it as pride rather than desperation, saying it shows people in the industry “are proud of what they’ve achieved over the past year”, and the judges reported that more entrants backed their claims with evidence this time.
The shortlist is broad in a way that is worth noting in a year when the trading news has been uniformly grim. Four businesses are up for the Toroa ā-uta, Toroa ā-tai Māori Tourism Award: Muirs Tours, Te Wharewaka o Pōneke, Waka on Avon, and Whanganui Tours. Māori operators also appear across other categories, and at the other end of the scale Intrepid Travel New Zealand and RealNZ are in the running for large business. Solo operators have their own micro business category.
Winners are announced at the awards dinner on Wednesday 4 November at Te Pae Christchurch, straight after Tourism Summit Aotearoa on the same day, and the category winners go into the draw for the Air New Zealand Supreme Tourism Award. If you are planning to be there, note that the summit, the awards and the accommodation demand all land on one date in one city.
Source: Waatea News · TIA’s release via Scoop · New Zealand Tourism Awards
Cardrona has bought back a week of the season it lost at the start
Cardrona Alpine Resort will now stay open to Sunday 18 October, a week past the closing date it had scheduled, on the back of a late run of snow. Snow-Forecast put the recent fall at up to 50 centimetres. Chief mountains officer Laura Hedley, who covers both Cardrona and Treble Cone, said the extra week means “more time on the mountain for everyone”, and the resort has priced a spring multi-day pass from $105 a day to fill it. Mt Hutt is sitting on close to two metres of base.
Put that against Friday’s regional numbers and the shape of the 2026 winter becomes clear. Queenstown’s domestic tourism spend fell 14.4 percent in July and Mackenzie’s fell 21.2 percent, in the month that is supposed to carry the season, after a dry May and a warm start pushed the South Island openings back into June. The snow arrived at the wrong end.
An extra week in the middle of October does not repair a July, and the spend that shows up in it is thinner per head than mid-winter spend. What it does do is add trading days for everyone downstream of the lifts, which in the Upper Clutha means transport, rental, food and beverage and a fortnight of accommodation nights that were not in the forecast. Worth a call to your Wānaka suppliers if you have late-season clients who can move.
Source: Snow-Forecast · SnowBrains
The North Island’s tallest waterfall closes completely on Monday, and reopens at the end of November
The Department of Conservation is shutting the Wairere Falls Track, its carpark and its toilets from Monday 7 September, with reopening targeted for the end of November. The track has been partly closed since mid-2025 over rockfall and slope instability in the gorge, and the full closure is what lets the contractors finish. Project manager Gerald Mullen said the work covers replacing platforms and a bridge and generally lifting the quality of the infrastructure on the site.
Wairere Falls drops 153 metres in the Kaimai Mamaku Conservation Park, on the Okauia side between Matamata and the Kaimai crossing. That puts it inside the day-trip radius of Hobbiton, Rotorua and Tauranga, and it is the kind of no-cost stop that gets quietly slotted into an itinerary as a leg-stretch. If it is in yours between now and December, it is gone, including the toilets. DOC has pointed people at Waharoa, Firth Tower Historic Reserve and Hetana Street Reserve for facilities.
The reopening date is the part to diary. End of November puts it back in service just before the summer peak, which is plainly the point of closing it now rather than in February.
Source: Department of Conservation
There are 325 kākāpō, and the constraint is now real estate
Ninety chicks from the 2026 breeding season were added to the official kākāpō count on Monday, once the youngest surviving chick passed 150 days and was counted as independent. That takes the population from 235 to 325. The recovery programme started in 1995 with 51 birds, and the last time the species is thought to have been above 300 was roughly 75 years ago. The season itself was extraordinary: 79 females nested, 258 eggs were laid and 106 chicks hatched, on the back of a heavy rimu mast across the sanctuary islands.
The birds live on two islands in Fiordland and on Whenua Hou near Rakiura, none of them open to casual visitors, and that is exactly why this matters commercially rather than only sentimentally. Science advisor Andrew Digby was blunt that after the next breeding season the programme needs another site. A recovery that succeeds runs out of predator-free island before it runs out of birds, and the next island has to come from somewhere.
For anyone selling New Zealand on its wildlife, this is the asset behaving the way the marketing says it does. It is also a reminder that the country’s best conservation stories are told about places guests are not allowed to go. The visitor-facing version of this is the mainland sanctuaries, and their capacity question is the same one Digby has just raised.
Source: Department of Conservation · RNZ
Coming up
- Monday 7 September Wairere Falls Track, carpark and toilets close completely for works
- 13 September Auckland’s City Rail Link opens to passengers
- 14 September Stats NZ international travel for July 2026
- 16 September The permanent hoiho set-net closure takes effect
- 18 September TrailLite launches the Roadcraft
- 24 September The House rises ahead of the general election
- September Avani Queenstown opens on the Lake Wākatipu waterfront. Cabinet’s decision on essential air route funding for Originair’s Westport service is still unannounced, with the route now a week without flights
- October Christchurch Airport’s annual meeting and SkyCity’s annual meeting
- 18 October Cardrona’s extended closing date
- 28 October Air New Zealand’s first direct Christchurch to Singapore service
- 4 November Tourism Summit Aotearoa and the New Zealand Tourism Awards, Te Pae Christchurch
- 7 November General election
- End of November Wairere Falls Track due to reopen
That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.