It’s Tuesday, and the two biggest numbers of the week so far point in opposite directions. Here’s what’s moving.
Six campaigns split $5 million to sell the quiet months, and two of them are chasing China
Tourism and Hospitality Minister Louise Upston announced the third Regional Tourism Boost round in Rotorua yesterday, $5 million shared across six international marketing campaigns targeting Australia, North America and China. The campaigns are for travel in spring 2026 and early summer 2027, and each one has to bring regional tourism organisations together with operators and hospitality businesses rather than being run by a single region.
RotoruaNZ’s Kiwi North food and hospitality campaign and ChristchurchNZ’s Christchurch and South Island campaign took the two largest awards at $994,902 each, both aimed at Chinese visitors. Tātaki Auckland Unlimited has $975,490 for a national United States and Canada campaign. Destination Great Lake Taupō and RotoruaNZ share $794,902 for a food trails campaign into Australia and the US, Visit Hurunui has $644,902 for a South Island food and outdoors campaign into Australia, and WellingtonNZ has $594,902 for the Classic New Zealand Wine and Food Trail, aimed at high-value Australians. Rotorua-led work accounts for nearly $1.8 million of the round.
The framing is unambiguously shoulder season. Upston said the aim is to get “more visitors arriving in the quieter months and travelling beyond our main gateways”, which is the same problem regional operators have been describing for three years. Whether a marketing campaign is the instrument that fixes it is a separate question, and the answer arrives as bookings between now and February.
Stat of the day
$1,989,804
The two biggest campaigns in the round, led by Rotorua and Christchurch, are both aimed at the Chinese market and together take almost 40 percent of the $5 million. (MBIE)
Source: Beehive, MBIE, NZ Herald
Hospitality’s annual growth fell from 7.3 percent to 0.6 percent in a single month
ANZ’s August card spending data, out on Friday, has hospitality down 1.0 percent for the month with every store type inside the category going backwards. Annual growth in hospitality dropped from 7.3 percent in July to 0.6 percent in August. Accommodation was 4.3 percent lower than August last year, cafes and restaurants 1.9 percent lower, and bars up 1.5 percent after being up 11.2 percent the month before.
Total card spending was flat on a seasonally adjusted basis and annual growth eased to 4.1 percent from 6.1 percent. Hospitality and housing-related durables together are close to a third of all card spending, so a soft month in both is most of the story. ANZ pointed at the weather, noting August was “seldom joyful weather-wise”, which is the sort of explanation that is either completely right or a way of not having one.
The bright spots sat elsewhere in the visitor economy. Tourism and recreation was up 2.3 percent for the month and 8.8 percent on the year, airlines and airports up 9.4 percent on the year, and cinemas up 77.4 percent. People are still going places. They are eating and sleeping more cheaply once they arrive.
Source: RNZ, ANZ merchant and card spending
Auckland Airport will screen you before it stamps you, from late 2027
Auckland Airport and New Zealand Customs confirmed yesterday that international passengers will go through security screening first and passport control second, reversing the order that has applied for decades. The change starts in late 2027 and construction runs through to 2029, tied to the build that consolidates domestic and international operations into a single terminal.
Customs describes the new sequence as international best practice and says it creates a clearer separation between security screening and border control. It is also running an eGate replacement programme alongside it. Chief operations officer Chloe Surridge for the airport and Craig Chitty for Customs both framed the work around minimising disruption during the transition, which is a reasonable thing to promise and a hard one to deliver in a terminal that never closes.
For anyone selling packaged departures, the practical detail is what sits between the two checkpoints. Duty free, lounges and the retail floor all currently fall after passport control. Where they land after 2029 is a decision the terminal build makes, not the traveller.
Source: RNZ
Port of Tauranga got 700 metres of wharf in five months, after seven years of hearings
An independent expert panel gave the Stella Passage development final approval yesterday under the Fast-track Approvals Act. The project extends the Sulphur Point container berth by 385 metres and the Mount Maunganui wharf by 315 metres, dredges Stella Passage so larger vessels can berth, reclaims land behind the new wharves and adds container cranes. Capacity goes from about 1.2 million TEU a year to about 2 million.
This is a freight approval rather than a tourism one, and the port’s chief financial officer Simon Kebbell put it in exactly those terms, calling it strategic infrastructure for future freight growth. Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop pointed to container capacity, vessel congestion and the age of the existing wharves.
The number worth keeping is the clock. Port of Tauranga lodged in January 2026, the panel issued a draft decision on 17 August and the final one three weeks later, roughly five months from the panel being appointed. The consenting attempt that preceded it ran about seven years. Several visitor-economy projects are now sitting in the same fast-track queue, and this is the clearest read yet on the speed that queue actually moves at.
Source: RNZ, Beehive, Port of Tauranga
The Tongariro Northern Circuit becomes a circuit again in mid-December
DOC confirmed on Friday that Mangatepopo Track, damaged by fires in late 2025, reopens in mid-December, restoring the link between Whakapapa Village and Mangatepopo Hut. Without it the Great Walk has run as an end-to-end tramp rather than a loop. Principal ranger Jenny Hayward put it plainly, saying that without Mangatepopo Track “the Tongariro Northern Circuit hasn’t been a circuit”.
The catch is the new Oturere Hut, which was meant to be ready for the start of the Great Walk season in late October. Poor weather stopped material deliveries, and the hut and campsite now open for bookings from 18 December. Walkers holding bookings in the affected window are being emailed a choice of moving their dates or taking a full refund.
So the season opens as an arc and turns into a loop about six weeks in, arriving with the peak booking window. Operators selling guided Tongariro itineraries this summer have two different products to describe depending on the departure date, and the changeover falls in the middle of the highest-demand stretch of the year.
Source: DOC
$2 million of visitor levy money went into a Waikato wetland most visitors will never see
Conservation Minister Tama Potaka announced two International Visitor Levy investments in the Waikato on Friday. The larger is $2 million over two years to start work on the Whangamarino Action Plan, covering roughly 7,000 hectares of swamp, fen and peat bog around the Whangamarino and Maramarua rivers south of the Bombay Hills. Whangamarino has been a Ramsar wetland of international importance since 1989, one of only seven sites in New Zealand with that status.
The smaller is $75,000 to Ōtorohanga Kiwi House for captive breeding of the Māhoenui giant wētā, a programme that has bred more than 300 of them since 2021.
Neither is a visitor attraction in the way the levy debate usually assumes. That is worth holding onto while the allocation stays contested. The IVL is not only funding the things tourists queue for, and the argument for it gets weaker, not stronger, when it is described as though it were.
Source: Beehive, DOC media releases
Coming up
- 10-12 September Snow Machine, Coronet Peak, The Remarkables and Queenstown
- 13 September Auckland’s City Rail Link opens to passengers, with new stations at Te Waihorotiu and Karanga-a-Hape
- 14 September Stats NZ international travel for July 2026, and the first day of DOC’s aerial control window in the Wilberforce and Mathias
- Mid-September Tourism New Zealand’s online AI collective forum for operators
- 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
- 30 September Feedback closes on Goat Island parking pricing, and AAT Kings early-bird pricing closes on the 2027/28 season
- 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
- 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
- 30 November DOC’s control window in the Wilberforce and Mathias closes, and Wairere Falls Track is due to reopen
- Mid-December Mangatepopo Track reopens, restoring the Tongariro Northern Circuit loop
- 18 December Oturere Hut and campsite open for bookings
- Late 2027 Auckland Airport switches international processing to security screening before passport control, with construction running to 2029
That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.