The Waitangi National Trust owns and runs the Waitangi Treaty Grounds in the Bay of Islands, Northland, where the Treaty was first signed in 1840. It is worth a profile because it is one of the few major attractions in the country that was built to live on its own takings, and its audited accounts show exactly how far that model now stretches.
A gift with a business attached
The grounds were gifted to the people of New Zealand by the Bledisloe family, and the trust that holds them was set up by deed of trust in 1932, with its board constituted under the Waitangi National Trust Board Act of that year. For most of the time since, it has paid its way from visitors. When the trust received $4 million from the arts, culture and heritage budget in May 2020 to get through Covid, RNZ reported it was believed to be the first government money for its baseline operations since 1932.
The trading side was split off on 1 July 2016 into Waitangi Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary. The trust holds the land, the buildings and the collection; the company runs the tickets, the shop and the visitor operation. Both are registered charities and both are audited by Audit New Zealand on behalf of the Auditor-General. The group’s accounts for the year to 30 June 2025, signed on 21 November 2025, carry a clean opinion.
How it is built now
What a visitor buys is one ticket for everything. From 1 October 2026 an international adult pays $78, up from $74, and a New Zealand resident adult with ID pays $39, up from $37. Children under 13 are free. The ticket lasts two consecutive days and includes a 50-minute guided tour, a 30-minute Māori cultural experience, the heritage buildings, the ceremonial waka, Te Kōngahu Museum of Waitangi and Te Rau Aroha, the museum of Māori military service that the Provincial Growth Fund paid $14.5 million towards.
The group’s total income in 2024/25 was $10.25 million:
- Admissions and sales of goods: $6.48 million, up 3.3 percent on the year and 25.8 percent on 2022/23
- Rents and leases: $0.73 million
- Government contracts: $0.42 million
- Regional Infrastructure Fund grant: $2.00 million
- Foundation North grant: $0.28 million
- Other government grants: $0.05 million
- Donations: $0.02 million
- Other income, mostly forestry: $0.28 million
Spending was $10.92 million: $5.05 million on staff, $1.65 million of depreciation, $0.91 million of cost of sales and $3.31 million of other costs. That last line includes $454,412 of repairs, $359,579 for the Waitangi Day commemorations and a one-off $500,000 contribution to refurbishing Te Tii Marae. After $186,551 of interest the group recorded a deficit of $480,882. It has no borrowings, liabilities of $1.49 million and net assets of $40.97 million.
What is worth copying: price for the visitor, and sweat the land
Two prices, one product. The resident price is exactly half the international one, and the two moved together in October. It is a simple answer to a problem many attractions fudge with discount codes and locals’ days: a site of national importance has to be affordable to the nation, and an international visitor on a once-in-a-lifetime trip will pay for the upkeep. Putting the tour, the performance and both museums into one ticket also means nobody at the gate is selling add-ons, and the two-day validity gives a reason to come back for the afternoon.
The estate earns its keep. The trust leases land and buildings to sports clubs, graziers, a hotel and staff tenants, on terms from 12 months to 30 years, which brought in $729,229. It also holds a forest valued at $756,000, which rose $160,000 in the year, and receives a statutory entitlement from an endowment forest worth $117,567. None of that depends on who comes through the gate, and together it was more than a tenth of what admissions and the shop earned.
Ticket income is growing. Admissions and sales rose from $5.15 million in 2022/23 to $6.48 million in 2024/25, before the latest price rise. The Government puts annual visitors at more than 160,000. On that figure, admissions and shop sales come to roughly $40 per visitor, a rough measure because it mixes a recent visitor count with last year’s revenue.
The number
$2.8m
The trust's 2024/25 deficit with its $2.33 million of grants taken out. On the same basis it was $2.92 million in 2023/24 and $3.27 million in 2022/23. (Waitangi National Trust audited accounts, 2024 and 2025)
Where the model runs out of road
It no longer pays for itself, and has not for at least three years. The trust reported a small surplus of $83,100 in 2023/24, but only after $3.0 million of government grants. In 2022/23 it booked $3.02 million of government grants, in a year when the Government announced a one-off $3 million for the trust, according to RNZ, and still lost $252,560. Take the grants out and the shortfall was $3.27 million, $2.92 million and $2.81 million in the three years to June 2025. Even leaving out the one-off marae contribution, 2024/25 would have been $2.31 million short. Depreciation of about $1.65 million a year explains part of the gap, but not all of it: the buildings are wearing out faster than admissions can replace them, and the trust spent $1.36 million on new assets in 2024/25 against $1.65 million of depreciation.
The Crown has become the backstop. In November 2024 the Regional Infrastructure Fund committed $10.2 million to protect heritage buildings from water damage, replace the floor of Te Whare Rūnanga and build a new carpark, according to the Northern Advocate. Only $2.0 million of that had been booked as revenue by June 2025, and the trust signed $937,207 of contracts for the programme after year end. Then on 10 September 2026 ministers announced a further $8 million from the same fund for the site’s continued operation and preservation. Across the three years to June 2025, Crown grants in the accounts totalled $8.07 million, with most of the $10.2 million and all of the $8 million still to come.
Public money comes with politics. After the political pōwhiri at the grounds in February 2025, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones said, as reported by RNZ, that he had “lost my zest in pushing future grants forward” unless the trust lifted its game. Other ministers said funding was not conditional on agreement with the Government, and the $8 million was announced 19 months later. But an attraction that hosts the most politically charged day of the national calendar, and has relied on Crown grants for between a fifth and a third of its income in each of the last three years, carries a risk no commercial operator would accept.
The domestic visitor is getting harder to reach. The Whare Waka Cafe, which had traded at the grounds for more than a decade, closed on 12 May 2026. Chief executive Ben Dalton told the Northern Advocate the trust was seeing a decline in domestic visitors, influenced by the fuel crisis and the cost of living. A coffee cart replaced it, and chair Dame Jenny Shipley has said the cafe is expected to reopen this summer with the new funding. The accounts for the year to June 2026, which would show how deep the domestic dip went, are not due on the Charities Register until 31 December.
Commemoration is a cost centre. Waitangi Day cost the trust $615,342 in 2023/24 and $359,579 in 2024/25. It is the event that gives the site its meaning and its fame, but in the accounts it shows up as a cost, and in 2023/24 a large one.
What to take away
If you run a heritage attraction, a museum or anything else whose asset matters more than its trading, the lesson from Waitangi is that good pricing and a diversified estate can take you a long way, but not the whole way. The trust has grown ticket income by about a quarter in two years, keeps local prices at half, earns more than $800,000 a year from land and forestry that has nothing to do with the gate, and carries no debt. It still needs about $3 million a year from someone else.
What is transferable is the structure: one ticket that includes everything, a resident price set as a fixed share of the international one, and income from the land that keeps coming in a bad season. What a reader should be wary of is the gap that opens when buildings need replacing faster than visitors can pay for them. Waitangi was named this month among nine sites on New Zealand’s tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage status, which RNZ notes is usually a five-to-ten-year path. Recognition of that kind brings visitors. It does not, on this evidence, bring a model that pays for the upkeep.
Written from public sources: the Waitangi National Trust group’s audited consolidated financial statements for the years ended 30 June 2025 and 30 June 2024, filed on the Charities Register; the trust’s published admission prices; RNZ reports of 18 May 2020 on the first operating grant, February 2023 on the one-off $3 million, 5 February 2025 on the minister’s remarks and 18 October 2026 on the World Heritage tentative list; the Northern Advocate (NZ Herald) reports of 28 May 2026 on the cafe closure and 10 September 2026 on the $8 million grant; and 1News of 10 September 2026 on the grant and earlier Crown funding. All arithmetic is ours and reconciles to the audited statements. Written without the operator’s involvement. The Shoulder Season has no commercial relationship with any business it covers, takes no payment for coverage, and gives no subject approval over what is published.
Operator profiles run every week or two, a different business each time. Written from public sources, with no involvement from the operator and no commercial relationship of any kind.