It’s Monday. Friday’s price figures landed after most people had stopped reading, and they contain the two numbers that set the floor under every inbound itinerary. Here’s what’s moving.
International airfares are up 21.5 percent on the year, the biggest rise since April 2023
Stats NZ published its selected price indexes for August on Friday. International airfares rose 4.3 percent in August against July, on top of a 10.9 percent rise in July, and 21.5 percent across the year to August. That is the largest annual increase since April 2023.
Prices and deflators spokesperson Nicola Growden attributed the monthly move to higher fares to Europe and Asia, and added a timing note worth holding onto: Stats NZ collects some international airfare prices about four months in advance, so “price changes that occurred earlier in the year for travel in August are now being reflected”. The August index is a reading on what long-haul travel was being sold for back in April. The fares being set now for January and February will not show up in this series until the summer is nearly over.
The second number in the same release matters more to anyone who owns vehicles. Diesel was up 8.6 percent in the month and 45.8 percent in the year to August. Petrol was up 2.0 percent and 17.9 percent on the same basis. A transport or transfer operator that has not repriced since last spring is absorbing a 45 percent increase in its single largest variable cost, and doing it in a year when, as this briefing reported on Thursday, households say dining out and driving are the first things they cut.
Restaurant meals and ready-to-eat food rose 3.2 percent for the year, the largest contributor to a 1.9 percent rise in food prices overall. Fruit and vegetables fell 1.6 percent, the biggest annual drop in that group since March 2025.
Stat of the day
21.5%
The rise in international airfares in the year to August 2026, the largest annual increase since April 2023. Diesel rose 45.8 percent over the same year. (Stats NZ)
Source: Stats NZ, interest.co.nz
SH6 between Makarora and Hāwea is open overnight from today, with convoys only in daylight hours
The Haast Pass route has moved from response to recovery. From Friday evening the road reopened to continuous traffic and stayed open through to 8am this morning. From today it runs on a new pattern: open to continuous traffic from 5.30pm to 8am on weeknights, closed between 8am and 5.30pm on weekdays with three escorted convoys a day.
The convoys leave the SH6 intersection with Meads Road heading north at 10am, 12pm and 2pm, returning south twenty minutes later. Today they turn at Makarora village. From tomorrow NZTA expects the closed section to shrink again, so the northern end moves down to Wharf Creek.
NZTA area manager for the lower South Island Chris Harris said abseilers and crews spent last week clearing unstable rock at the sites of most concern. The daytime restrictions stay because around 80,000 cubic metres of rock, gravel, vegetation and debris is stockpiled at the roadside and has to be trucked out, and rock scaling is continuing above the road. Harris said NZTA expects to be in a position this week to say when the road returns to 24-7 access, though reduced speed limits and single-lane sections will outlast the convoys.
For anyone routing a West Coast to Otago itinerary, the practical change is that the route is now usable in both directions outside business hours without waiting for a convoy, which it has not been since the end of August.
Source: NZTA release via Scoop
Nine New Zealand hotels pick up Michelin Keys, and five of them are in the South Island
The Michelin Guide’s 2026 hotel selection, announced on Saturday, takes New Zealand to 28 Key hotels: nine with Two Keys and 19 with One Key. Nine properties are new to the list.
Eight of the new entrants took One Key: Annandale Coastal Farm Escape in Canterbury, Craggy Range Luxury Vineyard Retreat at Havelock North, Hapuku Lodge and Tree Houses at Kaikōura, Hulbert House in Queenstown, Mt Cook Lakeside Retreat at Lake Pukaki, ROKI Collection Queenstown, The Clements Hotel in Cambridge and The Manse in Hawke’s Bay. Wallingford Homestead, also in Hawke’s Bay, went straight in at Two Keys. Delamore Lodge on Waiheke and Rosewood Matakauri at Queenstown were promoted from one Key to two.
The geography is the interesting part. Five of the nine new entrants are South Island, and three are in Hawke’s Bay, a region better known over the last three years for cyclone recovery than for luxury accommodation. Michelin international director Gwendal Poullennec described the global picture as continued investment in more immersive and personalised stays, which is the polite version of what the rate data has been saying all year: the top of the New Zealand market is where the pricing power sits, and the properties being built and bought are clustering there.
Source: 1News, Hospitality Business
Tairāwhiti’s visitor spend rose 10 percent to $132 million while visitor days fell 9 percent
Trust Tairāwhiti’s destination dashboard has the Gisborne district taking $132 million from visitors in the year to July, up 10 percent, on 9 percent fewer visitor days. International visitor days fell 2 percent to 525,000 and domestic fell 10 percent to 1.8 million.
The gap is explained almost entirely by one market. International spending rose 45 percent to $24.8 million while domestic spending rose 4 percent to $107 million. Working back from those growth rates, the prior year was about $17.1 million international and $102.9 million domestic. So of the roughly $11.8 million of additional spending, about $7.7 million, or two thirds, came from international visitors who account for less than a quarter of the visitor days. The United States was the largest international market at $9.5 million, up 57 percent. Food and beverage services took the largest share of all visitor spending at $55.1 million.
One caveat on the arithmetic, which is ours rather than the Trust’s. Dividing each spend figure by its own visitor days gives about $47 a day for international visitors and about $59 for domestic ones. That is the opposite of the usual shape, and probably says more about how long each group stays than about what they buy in a day, but it is a reminder that “international spending up 45 percent” is not the same claim as “international visitors are the high-value ones”.
The national line buried in the same data is the one to circle. Across New Zealand, visitor days grew in only two regions, the West Coast at 3 percent and Otago at 1 percent. Taranaki had the largest domestic fall at 30 percent. Gisborne mayor Rehette Stoltz linked the local drop to highway closures through the Waiōweka Gorge. Filled roles in local food and beverage services were down 5 percent.
Source: Local Democracy Reporting via Scoop
DOC says people walking round the barriers at Wairere Falls could push the reopening past November
The Wairere Falls Track near Matamata, its car park and its toilets closed completely on 7 September for bridge, platform and rockfall works, with a full reopening planned for the end of November. One week in, DOC says visitors are bypassing multiple signs and physical barriers and turning up where contractors are working.
Project manager Gerald Mullen said that if people keep arriving, the department can no longer promise the November date, because the work has to slow down to keep them safe, and that delays are already happening. The underlying hazard has not changed since DOC first closed the track: one boulder in the gorge is about three metres across and could come away at any time.
The reopening date is the thing at risk. End of November puts the highest waterfall in the North Island back in service just before the summer peak, and it is exactly the kind of free, short, close-to-Matamata walk that fills a gap in a Waikato itinerary. A slip to December or January would take it out of the season it exists to serve.
Source: DOC
Rotorua Museum has finished construction, and still cannot open for another two years
Construction on Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa is complete, almost ten years after the building was shut in November 2016 over earthquake strengthening concerns. The fences are down and the building is visible again. The project came to $73.55 million: $15.5 million from Rotorua Lakes Council, $41.45 million from government and other public sources, $15 million from Rotorua Trust and the balance from private fundraising. Council chief executive Andrew Moraes said it finished on time and under budget, on a 120-year-old building sitting in an active geothermal field.
Then comes the part that matters to anyone selling Rotorua. The doors do not open. The project now moves into fit-out and exhibition development, with the foyer and the museum proper expected in 2028, and $7 million to $8 million still to be found for the exhibitions themselves. A karakia is planned for 28 September. In the meantime the council spends $319,000 a year storing close to 2,900 artworks valued at $21.5 million.
Ten years closed, two more before a visitor can buy a ticket, and a funding gap still open on the part people actually come to see. The Bath House is the image on half the postcards of Rotorua, and it has now been a building site for longer than it has been a working museum in the memory of anyone currently booking the region.
Coming up
- 21 September Race of Champions pre-sale opens, with general ticket sales from 22 September. SH6 between Makarora and Hāwea returns to weekday daytime convoys, open 5.30pm to 8am
- 24 September Air New Zealand’s annual shareholders’ meeting, online at 2pm, where Larry De Shon retires from the board and Campbell Wilson and Robert McDonald stand for election. The House rises ahead of the general election, and new visitor visa applications in nineteen categories must be started in the enhanced Immigration Online system
- 28 September Karakia at Rotorua Museum as the project moves into fit-out
- Week of 28 September NZTA expects to be able to say when SH6 between Makarora and Hāwea returns to 24-7 access
- 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
- 1 October Parliament is dissolved, with writ day on 4 October and nominations closing at noon on 8 October
- 8 October The old visitor visa forms close and remaining drafts are deleted
- October Christchurch Airport’s annual meeting and SkyCity’s annual meeting
- 18 October Cardrona’s extended closing date
- 25 October Air New Zealand’s expanded Hobart to Auckland season starts, with 28 percent more seats than last summer
- 26 October Voting opens for the general election. Air New Zealand becomes the first international airline into Western Sydney Airport
- 28 October The Reserve Bank’s next OCR review, at 2pm. 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
- 28 and 30 November Air New Zealand’s first direct Christchurch services to Narita and Perth
- 30 November DOC’s control window in the Wilberforce and Mathias closes, and Wairere Falls Track is due to reopen, subject to visitors staying off the worksite
- 9 December The Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Statement
- Mid-December Mangatepopo Track reopens, restoring the Tongariro Northern Circuit loop
- 18 December Oturere Hut and campsite open for bookings
- End of 2026 DOC and the Backcountry Trust aim to sign a national operational agreement on the hut and track network
- 9 and 10 January 2027 Race of Champions, Hnry Stadium, Wellington
- 2027 The WOW Exhibition premieres in Wellington, before touring internationally
- 19 to 25 April 2027 Conservation Week, finishing on ANZAC Day
- 1 July 2027 The date National’s council funding, and ACT’s Local Tourism Dividend, would both start
- Late 2027 The Arawa Park Hotel reopens as the Rotorua Marriott Hotel, the first Marriott Hotels-branded property in New Zealand
- 2028 Rotorua Museum due to reopen to the public
That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.