It’s Wednesday, and after two years of arguing about who should pay for tourism infrastructure, one of the two main parties has finally put a number on it. Here’s what’s moving.
National would split the $100 visitor levy three ways, with councils getting whatever is left
Christopher Luxon, Nicola Willis and Louise Upston announced in Auckland yesterday that a re-elected National government would reset how the International Visitor Levy is spent from 1 July 2027. The levy itself stays at $100 a head, and Willis has committed to not raising it for three years.
The carve-up is the policy. Conservation gets $100 million a year, a new Tourism Priorities Fund gets $50 million a year, and everything remaining goes to councils in proportion to the share of international visitor guest nights each one hosts. That remainder starts at $86 million in 2027/28 and rises to $106 million by 2030/31, which is roughly $385 million to local government over four years. Auckland would get $19.1 million in the first year and Queenstown Lakes $17.1 million.
Two things are worth separating here. The first is that this is a distribution mechanism, not new money from visitors: the same $100 is collected at the border either way, and what changes is who spends it. The second is that the three allocations add to more than the levy actually raises, so the conservation share is topped up out of the Budget operating allowance. That is the detail the policy turns on, and it is why the argument about whether this counts as ring-fencing is not just semantics.
Stat of the day
$86 million
What is left for every council in the country to share in 2027/28, after conservation and the Tourism Priorities Fund take their $150 million off the top. (National Party policy, via RNZ)
The mayors welcomed it and then did the subtraction
Queenstown Lakes mayor John Glover put the gap most plainly. A 5 percent accommodation levy would have raised about $40 million a year for his district. National’s formula gives him $17.1 million. That is roughly $23 million a year of difference in the district with the least room to absorb it, and Glover has been calling the bed tax reversal “policy made in panic” since National ruled the levy out on 24 August.
Auckland’s Wayne Brown was warmer but no less arithmetical, calling it a step in the right direction while noting he is about $8 million short of the $27 million he says a 2.5 percent bed tax would have raised. Rotorua’s Tania Tapsell was the most positive, describing it as “such a relief” on the grounds that councils will now decide how the money is spent rather than bidding for it. LGNZ president and Gisborne mayor Rehette Stoltz said the numbers looked promising and the devil would be in the detail.
Glover also flagged the measurement problem, which matters more than it sounds. The formula pays on international guest nights, and guest nights in Airbnb and other short-stay rentals are not captured the way hotel nights are. A district with a large unhosted rental market gets paid for the visitors it can count, not the visitors it hosts.
Both coalition partners took a swing at the policy on the day it launched
ACT’s David Seymour said the plan was “suspiciously similar” to the Local Tourism Dividend his party released last month, which would pay councils $1 per guest night from 1 July 2027. His sharper point is that the levy is already committed spending, so funding this means cutting something else.
Winston Peters went at the same weak spot from the other side, telling The Spinoff the policy is “not ring-fencing the visitor levy” but reallocating the operating allowance. Labour’s Glen Bennett noted that National opposed the levy when Labour introduced it and is now seeking credit for sharing it out. Peters has separately maintained since 27 August that the accommodation levy remains government policy, which it is not, at least not in National’s version of the government.
For operators the useful read is that three of the four parties likely to matter after 7 November now have a published position on paying for tourism infrastructure, and all three route money through councils rather than through central agencies. The arguments are about the plumbing, not the principle.
Source: The Spinoff, RNZ
Michelin’s first stars are turning up in restaurant payrolls, ten weeks in
New Zealand’s first Michelin stars were awarded on 30 June to 15 restaurants across Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown. The NZ Herald has gone back to some of them, and the effects are showing up in staffing rather than in tourist arrivals.
Essence in Queenstown, which took two stars, has hired seven people and doubled its nightly waitlist from four tables to eight, with near-full capacity booked four months out. Logan Brown in Wellington saw bookings lift 25 to 30 percent, took on another full-time waiter, and is reopening Tuesdays to get back to a six-day week it dropped during Covid. Inati in Christchurch took 80 bookings in the first half hour after the announcement. Ahi in Auckland recorded its busiest July.
The caution is in the timing. Southern Crossings director Sarah Farag says overseas clients have not yet rewritten itineraries, because long-haul bookings are made too far ahead for a June announcement to show up by September. Tourism New Zealand’s projection is 36,000 additional visitors a year from 2027 and $185 million over three years, against an $8 million investment across three years. Those are forecasts, not results. What is measurable so far is domestic and it is jobs, which for a hospitality sector that lost 2,900 businesses in a year is not the least interesting outcome.
Source: NZ Herald
Mount Cheeseman called its season on 3 September, in the same week Cardrona bought itself another one
The Canterbury club field closed for 2026 after warm northwesterlies and rain took the lower mountain apart. In its own mountain report the club said it no longer had “a learners area, lift load area or lower T Bar line and no snow to rebuild it with”, and that a substantial snowfall would be needed to reopen rather than merely a good one.
The decision was as much financial as meteorological. Club fields run on small teams and thin reserves, and holding staff on through a fortnight of maybe is a cost a volunteer-backed operation cannot carry on the chance of a storm. The club said there was too much uncertainty for both the club and the staff team.
Set it against Cardrona buying back a week at the other end of the same season and you have the shape of a 2026 winter that arrived late, ended unevenly, and rewarded altitude and capital. The commercial fields with snowmaking and high terrain got a full season. A learners’ slope at 1,200 metres did not.
Source: Mt Cheeseman mountain report, Powder
Most visitor visa applications move to the new Immigration Online system on 24 September
Immigration New Zealand is retiring the old application forms for the general visitor visa and around nineteen related categories, including business visitor, medical treatment, sports events, short-term entertainment and visiting media visas. From 24 September no new applications can be started in the old system. The forms close entirely on 8 October and any draft still sitting in the old system that day is deleted.
This is the larger tranche of the same migration that moved group, tour escort and ADS FIT applications across on 24 August. Anyone holding half-finished applications, which in practice means inbound operators and agents handling groups and events, has until 8 October to submit them or start again in the new platform.
Source: Immigration New Zealand
The first toroa of the season have flown from Taiaroa Head
DOC confirmed yesterday that the first northern royal albatross chicks have fledged from Pukekura, the headland at the tip of the Otago Peninsula that is the only mainland breeding site for the species anywhere in the world. Āwheo, the chick carried on the Royal Cam livestream, went between 3 and 4 September.
The birds now spend about five years at sea before returning to breed. Last season 38 chicks fledged, a record for the colony. Biodiversity ranger Sharyn Broni noted that the parents are “exhausted from 7 months of feeding them”, which after seven months of hand-wringing about visitor levies is a refreshingly concrete measure of effort.
The colony is co-managed by Te Poari a Pukekura with Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou, the Korako Karetai Trust and the Dunedin City Council, and the Royal Cam runs with Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology, now in its tenth year and drawing millions of views a year. For a peninsula whose wildlife tourism depends on the colony being both accessible and undisturbed, a good fledging season is the product.
Source: DOC via Scoop, DOC media releases
Coming up
- 10 to 12 September: Snow Machine at Coronet Peak, The Remarkables and Queenstown
- 13 September: Auckland’s City Rail Link opens to passengers
- 14 September: Stats NZ releases international travel for July 2026
- 14 September to 30 November: DOC’s aerial 1080 window in the Wilberforce and Mathias valleys
- 16 September: The permanent hoiho set-net closure takes effect
- 24 September: New visitor visa applications must be started in the enhanced Immigration Online system
- 8 October: The old visitor visa forms close and remaining drafts are deleted
- 7 November: General election
- 1 July 2027: The date National’s council funding, and ACT’s Local Tourism Dividend, would both start
Corrected 9 September: an earlier version of the Mount Cheeseman heading said the club closed three days before Cardrona extended its season. Both decisions were reported in the same week.
That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.