It’s Friday, the start of Labour Weekend and the traditional opening of the summer season, and the cost of getting here is the story of the week. Here’s what’s moving.
International airfares rise 14.3 percent in a quarter, and oil is back above US$110 before the inflation relief has landed
Stats NZ’s consumers price index for the September quarter, released yesterday, put annual inflation at 3.7 percent, down from 4.1 percent in June, with prices up 0.7 percent in the quarter. Cheaper petrol did most of the easing: pump prices fell 6.5 percent over the three months. The item pushing hardest the other way was international airfares, up 14.3 percent in the quarter. Stats NZ’s Nicola Growden told RNZ it was the biggest quarterly rise in international fares since the December 2022 quarter, driven mainly by dearer fares to Europe and Asia.
That fits what Air New Zealand’s trading update showed on Wednesday: fewer seats, fuller planes and higher fares to cover jet fuel. For inbound operators the airfare line works in two directions. It is a measure of what New Zealanders pay to fly out, so dearer long-haul fares keep more domestic holiday spending at home this summer. But the same fuel bill sits inside every fare sold to a visitor flying in, and for long-haul markets the flight is already the biggest single cost of the trip.
The relief on petrol is already gone. Brent crude rose as much as 4 percent overnight to just over US$113 a barrel, its highest since May, RNZ reported, on reports that the United States is planning renewed strikes on Iran. That is US$13 below April’s peak of US$126 (126 minus 113). Pump prices tend to follow a week or two behind, so the dearer fuel is likely to reach rental vehicles, ferries and road trips in the first weeks of the season.
Economists now expect inflation to rise again, to as much as 4.5 percent in the December quarter, and financial markets are betting on the Reserve Bank lifting the official cash rate by 25 basis points to 3 percent on Wednesday, RNZ reported. Excluding food, fuel and household energy, annual inflation was 2.9 percent. Two other lines matter to operators directly: electricity was up 9.3 percent on a year earlier and local body rates 6.2 percent, both costs that land on every accommodation and attraction business regardless of how many visitors come through the door.
Stat of the day
14.3%
The rise in international airfares in the three months to September, the largest quarterly increase since the December 2022 quarter, mainly on fares to Europe and Asia. (Stats NZ, via RNZ)
Source: RNZ on the CPI, RNZ on oil prices, Stats NZ
The Commerce Commission caps fees on business credit cards, saving merchants about $40m a year from April
The Commerce Commission will cap the interchange fees banks charge on Mastercard and Visa commercial credit cards, the cards companies issue to staff for work spending. It expects the change to save businesses about $40 million a year, on top of the earlier caps on personal cards, for a combined saving of about $290 million a year. The new caps take effect on 22 April 2027.
The numbers explain why the commission bothered. Businesses pay about $170 million a year in merchant service fees to accept commercial credit cards, and about $125 million of that is interchange. Retail NZ told RNZ that commercial cards account for 19 percent of all interchange fees paid while making up 8 percent of the value of transactions, and that it was disappointed the in-person domestic cap was set at 0.7 percent, when the commission had considered going as low as 0.5 percent.
Corporate travel spending goes on these cards, so hotels, restaurants and business-events venues are among the merchants most exposed to them. A merchant cannot tell at the counter whether a card is personal, business or foreign, which is why so many apply one flat surcharge. The commission’s advice is for businesses to review their merchant agreements before April, and that is the moment to check whether a surcharge set when commercial card fees were higher still matches the cost of taking payment.
Source: Commerce Commission, RNZ
Airbnb tells hosts their checkout chores must be “reasonable”, with no fines and seven standard house rules
Airbnb has rewritten the rules hosts can set for guests, RNZ reported. Requests now have to be reasonable and must not take significant time or effort or be work a cleaner would normally do. Asking guests to put dishes in the sink is fine; asking them to wash and put them away, strip the beds or take the rubbish out is not. Host-imposed fines are banned, and hosts cannot restrict access to any feature advertised in the listing. Hosts will choose from seven standard house rules, shown more prominently on the listing page.
Consumer NZ welcomed the change, pointing to guests’ frustration at paying a cleaning fee and then being handed a list of jobs. Massey University marketing academic Bodo Lang made the more interesting point: the policy nudges guests to expect hotel standards, and moves the platform further from its origins as people renting out their homes. For the motel and hotel trade, which has long argued that short-term rentals compete with it on unequal terms, that is a platform conceding the comparison. For hosts, it means the cleaning fee now has to cover the cleaning.
Source: RNZ
A Kāwhia trust closes its beach to vehicles from tomorrow, and the council says the barrier breaks its bylaw
Onepū Charitable Trust will close the last gap in a line of two-metre wooden poles at Kāwhia Beach, near Maketū marae, from Saturday, blocking vehicles from driving over the lagoon to Ocean Beach and the Te Puia hot springs, RNZ reported. The trust says vehicles and motorbikes have destroyed shellfish beds, flounder spawning grounds and shorebird nesting sites, and a 600-signature petition to the council last year asked for another route to the beach. Walkers and horses can still get through.
Ōtorohanga District Council says private landowners can only lawfully stop vehicles above the high-tide mark, so the poles below it breach its traffic bylaw, and it has asked for them to come out. The trust has declined. Trust chair Horahaere Daisy Scott said the closure was about protecting the environment, not keeping people away from the beach.
The Te Puia hot springs on Ocean Beach are one of the Waikato coast’s better-known visitor draws, and Labour Weekend is the first big weekend of the summer. Anyone sending visitors there should plan on them walking in rather than driving. The wider point is one Northland and other coastal districts have already met: when beach driving damages kaimoana and there is no other route, local hapū and trusts are increasingly prepared to act first and argue the bylaw later.
Source: RNZ
Coming up
- 24 October: Vehicle access to Kāwhia’s Ocean Beach across the Maketū lagoon closes
- 24-26 October: Buses replace all Metlink trains in the Wellington region over Labour Weekend
- 25 October: The Kawarau Gorge Trail opens in part, Cromwell to Pioneer Bridge, and the airlines’ summer scheduling season begins
- 26 October: Labour Day, and Air New Zealand’s first Auckland to Western Sydney service
- 28 October: Reserve Bank OCR decision, and Air New Zealand’s first Christchurch to Singapore service
- 1 November: Backcountry Hut Tickets move to DOC’s online booking system
- 4 November: Tourism Summit Aotearoa and the NZ Tourism Awards, Te Pae Christchurch
- 7 November: General election
- 14 November: Contractors start on the Hahei Beach Short Walk reroute
- 5 March 2027: Chase & Status at Forsyth Barr Stadium, Dunedin
- 7 April 2027: Air New Zealand’s codeshare with Qantas ends
- 22 April 2027: Interchange fee caps on commercial credit cards take effect
- 1 July 2027: New Border Processing Levy rates take effect, with arriving cruise passengers paying $7.20
That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.