It’s Tuesday. The global demand picture for the season we are about to sell got worse last week, and the New Zealand items underneath it are all about what a business earns when its core product stops carrying it. Here’s what’s moving.
UN Tourism has cut its 2026 forecast from 3 to 4 percent down to 1 to 2 percent
The September World Tourism Barometer landed last week, and it is the first hard revision of the year. International tourist arrivals are now expected to grow between 1 and 2 percent in 2026, against the 3 to 4 percent UN Tourism forecast in January. The agency attributes the cut to the Middle East conflict and its knock-on effects on oil prices and inflation, and says the outcome depends on how long the conflict runs.
The first half was already flat. An estimated 690 million people travelled internationally between January and June, 3 million more than the same period last year, a rise of 0.4 percent. Growth of 2 percent in the first quarter gave way to a 0.8 percent fall in the second. June was down 3 percent globally, with Western Europe off 6 percent on heatwaves and fewer, more expensive long-haul flights.
Against that, Oceania looks strong and the detail is worth reading properly. Arrivals to the region rose 4.1 percent across the half, roughly ten times the world rate, but the growth was front-loaded: up 9.3 percent in the first quarter, then down 2.2 percent in the second and down 5.9 percent in June, which UN Tourism puts down to typhoon Sinlaku. The wider Asia and Pacific region grew 0.7 percent and is still 11 percent below its 2019 level, held back by air connectivity, airfares and weak intraregional demand.
The forward read is cautious rather than gloomy. UN Tourism’s panel of experts scored September to December at 113 on a scale where 100 means no change, up from 105 for the previous four months. Secretary General Shaikha Al Nuwais said tourism had not stopped growing, “but that growth is fragile”. The agency also expects travellers to keep hunting value and to keep travelling closer to home, which is the line in the document that should concern anyone selling a long-haul New Zealand itinerary at 2027 prices.
Stat of the day
+4.1%
Growth in international arrivals to Oceania in the first half of 2026, against 0.4 percent for the world. All of it came in the first quarter; the second quarter was down 2.2 percent. (UN Tourism)
Source: UN Tourism World Tourism Barometer, September 2026, CAPA
Air New Zealand fell eight places to 32nd in the Skytrax rankings, weeks after a $336 million loss
Singapore Airlines took the World’s Best Airline title at the Skytrax World Airline Awards in London on Friday, its sixth, ahead of Qatar Airways and Cathay Pacific. The survey behind it ran from September 2025 to August 2026, covered more than 300 airlines and drew responses from over 100 nationalities.
Air New Zealand finished 32nd, down eight places on last year and outside the top 20 for the first time in some years. Qantas placed 12th and took both Best Airline in Australia and the Pacific and the regional staff service award.
The dates matter more than the ranking. The voting window is almost exactly the financial year Air New Zealand has just reported, in which it posted a loss before tax of $336 million against earnings of $164 million the year before, and a net loss of $242 million on revenue of $7.0 billion. The airline put $190 million of that down to Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 and Pratt and Whitney engine availability, through lost capacity, extra lease and engine costs and poorer fleet utilisation, and an estimated $135 million to fuel after the Middle East conflict pushed costs up by $328 million against what it had expected.
Passengers were voting on the year in which aircraft were being pulled out of service. For an inbound sector that has spent a decade using the national carrier’s reputation as part of the pitch, the ranking is a lagging indicator of something operators already knew. Air New Zealand holds its annual shareholders’ meeting on Thursday.
Source: Skytrax, Air New Zealand, Canberra Times
Heritage rail operators are being asked to stand down services after a fatality at Te Awamutu
A person was struck and killed by a Glenbrook Vintage Railway excursion train at Te Awamutu station on Sunday evening. The Transport Accident Investigation Commission opened inquiry RO-2026-108 the same day, recorded as a passenger train at a station platform, fatality, Te Awamutu. Police are investigating and NZTA, as rail safety regulator, is gathering information to decide whether it runs a separate inquiry.
The train was running the Spiral Steam Spectacular, a full-day charter from Glenbrook through the Waikato to National Park and back over the Raurimu Spiral, with hundreds of passengers aboard. TAIC chief investigator Louise Cook said investigators would focus first on establishing what happened and identifying evidence that could assist the inquiry. Senior Sergeant John McCarthy described it as a tragic incident and said support was being provided to whānau and to the people who went to help.
Glenbrook Vintage Railway board chairperson Glenn Deed said the society’s thoughts were first and foremost with the whānau and friends of the person who died. Separately, heritage rail operator Steam Incorporated has recommended to its members and to other operators that heritage services elsewhere in the country be suspended as a precaution while the investigations run, a recommendation NZTA confirmed.
Heritage rail is a volunteer-run, charter-funded corner of the visitor economy with thin margins and long booking lead times, and a voluntary national stand-down in the weeks before the summer charter season is a real hit on top of an already hard year. There is no indication yet of how long services will be paused.
Ōamaru Airport has been told its greatest strength is the land, not the runway
Waitaki District Council has approved an Ōamaru Airport Strategy and Development Business Plan, written for a future in which the airport’s anchor tenant has gone. New Zealand Airline Academy decided in May not to renew its lease, which ended in June, after opening there in 2018 and passing 200 students in the past year.
Council airport manager Matthew Sisson told councillors that the consistent message from a recent small airports conference was that most airport revenue is not aviation revenue. He cited one North Island airport where aviation makes up 15 percent of income, and said they do not want any more than that. The strategy identifies the airport’s large area of underutilised land as its greatest strength, notes that farming leases are currently its stable revenue source, and warns that leaving those tenants uncertain about the land’s future would weaken rather than strengthen its position.
The options canvassed are a solar farm, a freight and logistics hub using the site’s proximity to State Highway 1 and rail, aerospace work, limited scheduled services to Christchurch, and acting as a tourism gateway for cruise passengers landing at Timaru. The strategy is candid that the airport has historically run at a deficit, that most of these ideas need substantial capital, and that competing with larger regional airports is hard.
It is a small document about a small airport, and it states the arithmetic that most of provincial New Zealand’s aviation infrastructure is living inside: the aeroplanes are the reason the asset exists and not the reason it pays.
Source: Otago Daily Times, RNZ
Auckland Airport is rebuilding 10km of baggage conveyor and adding a 3,000-bag robotic store
Auckland Airport has begun a baggage overhaul that runs to 2029 as part of the integrated terminal project. More than 10 kilometres of conveyor will be replaced or added, tripling the current network, and individual bags will be tracked with RFID tags rather than followed by batch.
The centrepiece is an automated early-bag store, which the airport calls a bag hotel: 6.5-metre racking on a 40 by 20 metre footprint holding up to 3,000 domestic and international bags, with robotic mini-loaders placing and retrieving trays. The control software, built in Denmark and already installed, is the same system used at Singapore Changi and Kuala Lumpur.
An early-bag store is what lets an airport accept a bag hours before its flight without a person handling it twice, which is the constraint behind most of the check-in queueing at Auckland today. The catch is the timeline. The airport has already flagged that the most intensive stage of the terminal build runs to early 2028 with disruption expected at check-in, and the baggage system does not finish until 2029. Operators moving groups through Auckland are buying three more summers of margin before the improvement arrives.
Coming up
- 22 September General ticket sales open through Ticketek for the Race of Champions in Wellington
- 24 September Air New Zealand’s annual shareholders’ meeting, online at 2pm
- 24 September The House rises ahead of the general election
- 24 September New applications for the general visitor visa and around nineteen related categories must be started in the enhanced Immigration Online system
- 28 September Karakia at Rotorua Museum as the completed building 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
- 8 October The old visitor visa forms close and remaining drafts in the old system are deleted
- 22 October Best Places to Work awards, with House of Travel, GO Rentals and Intrepid DMC NZ among the finalists
- 28 October The Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Review and OCR decision, after September’s rise to 2.75 percent
That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.