The Shoulder Season A daily read on New Zealand tourism

Tuesday 20 October 2026

Queenstown's international passengers rise 19 percent in September while Auckland's domestic traffic falls 7 percent

Two airports pull in opposite directions heading into summer, Hawke's Bay hosts the world's wine tourism regions this week, Trade Me stops selling raw pounamu, and Waikato and Coromandel operators say summer bookings look strong.

By the Shoulder Season desk

A white twin-engine turboprop parked on an apron
Photo by Tactualgalaxy on Unsplash

It’s Tuesday, and the news flow since yesterday’s edition has been light, so today’s edition runs four items and gives the lead some room. The September airport numbers arrived last week without much attention, and they say more about this summer than most of what has been written since. Here’s what’s moving.

Queenstown’s international passengers rise 19 percent in September while Auckland’s domestic traffic falls 7 percent

Auckland Airport’s monthly traffic update for September, filed with the NZX on 15 October, shows the country’s two biggest visitor gateways moving in opposite directions. At Queenstown, international passenger movements were 108,935, up 19 percent on September 2025, while domestic movements slipped 1 percent to 139,155. International passengers are now 44 percent of Queenstown’s traffic: 108,935 out of a total of 248,090. Over the rolling 12 months, Queenstown handled 1,125,701 international passengers, up 16 percent.

Auckland went the other way at home. Domestic passenger movements fell 7 percent to 667,048, roughly 50,000 fewer than a year earlier, with seat capacity also down 7 percent. Regional routes fell harder, with passengers and seats both down 9 percent. The airport puts this down to continued capacity cuts and to the September school holidays starting a week later this year, which pushed some travel into October. International traffic through Auckland was flat at 827,668. By nationality, Chinese visitors were up 12 percent and Americans up 9 percent, while Australians rose 1 percent and Indian nationals fell 4 percent.

The pattern matters for anyone selling domestic product. Airlines are flying international visitors directly into Queenstown in growing numbers, but there are fewer domestic and regional seats out of Auckland to move people around the country once they arrive. Load factors on Auckland’s regional routes were 83 percent, so the planes that are flying are mostly full. Operators who rely on visitors connecting through Auckland to a regional airport should expect tight availability and firm fares this summer, and should not assume the seats will be there for late bookings.

Stat of the day

44%

The share of Queenstown Airport's September passengers who were flying internationally: 108,935 of 248,090, after international movements rose 19 percent on a year earlier. (Auckland International Airport monthly traffic update)

Source: Auckland International Airport via NZX

Hawke’s Bay hosts the world’s wine tourism regions this week

The 26th Great Wine Capitals International Annual Conference is running in Hawke’s Bay from 18 to 22 October, the first time the network has brought its annual conference to New Zealand. The network links wine regions including Bordeaux, Napa Valley, Mendoza, Rioja, Porto and Adelaide, and Hawke’s Bay joined in 2023. The theme is “A World of New”. The five-day programme includes travel trade meetings, winery visits, hosted dinners and pre- and post-conference trips built with local businesses, and Hawke’s Bay Tourism has opened some events to the public, including an international wine tasting.

For a region still rebuilding its visitor economy after Cyclone Gabrielle, a week of international travel trade and media seeing the product first hand is worth more than most marketing budgets could buy. The real test is what comes afterwards: whether the trade contacts made this week turn into itineraries that put Hawke’s Bay on international programmes alongside Marlborough and Central Otago.

The same week brings a smaller piece of wine news with a longer tail. New Zealand’s free trade agreement with India came into force today, and Trade Minister Todd McClay said tariffs of 150 percent on New Zealand wine will come down to 25 or 50 percent over 10 years. That is an export story first, but wine brands that become known in a market tend to bring visitors to their cellar doors later.

Source: Great Wine Capitals, Hawke’s Bay Tourism, RNZ

Trade Me stops listing raw pounamu, and Ngāi Tahu calls it a breakthrough

From today, Trade Me has cancelled all current listings of raw pounamu and put restrictions in place to stop new ones. Finished pieces, including carved pendants, can still be sold. Ngāi Tahu, which owns pounamu under its 1997 settlement legislation, has long fought the illegal collection and trade of the raw stone. Poutini Ngāi Tahu rūnanga co-chair Francois Tumahai told RNZ that proving where any piece of raw stone came from was slow and difficult, so a blanket ban was the right approach. He said more pounamu was being found as gold mining on the West Coast increases, and the black market was growing with it.

For the visitor economy, this protects the value of what is sold legitimately. Pounamu is one of the few souvenirs that carries genuine cultural weight, and a carved piece is worth what it is partly because buyers trust where the stone came from. Galleries and carvers in Hokitika and elsewhere who source legally gain from a smaller grey market. Tumahai said the iwi now wants overseas marketplaces to follow Trade Me’s lead, and those platforms have so far been slow to respond.

Source: RNZ

Waikato and Coromandel operators say summer bookings look like the strongest since the pandemic

Operators in Waikato and Hauraki-Coromandel told Local Democracy Reporting they expect their biggest summer since Covid. Shayne Forrest, general tourism manager at Hobbiton Movie Set in Matamata, said international visitor numbers there passed pre-pandemic levels two years ago, helped by reinvesting in the product and slightly reducing capacity to keep the experience high quality. He also said more international visitors are now coming outside the peak periods. Destination Hauraki-Coromandel general manager Kylie Hawker-Green said international visitors to the region in August were up 6 percent on a year earlier, and that accommodation booking data for summer already looked strong.

Hawker-Green made a point that applies well beyond the Coromandel. Last summer’s bad weather meant domestic visitors cancelled when they saw the forecast, while the international market still grew year on year. That is the case for a region with a small council-funded budget to spend it on the international market, which books earlier, stays longer and spends more per day. Hobbiton’s decision to cap numbers is worth noting too. The attraction with the strongest demand in the region chose to sell fewer tickets to protect the quality of the visit, which is a choice most operators only get to make when demand is this strong.

Source: Local Democracy Reporting via Scoop

Coming up

That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.