The Shoulder Season A daily read on New Zealand tourism

Monday 2 November 2026

The Southerner comes back on a $3.4m loan, and the tourism districts keep growing while the cities shrink

A regular train from Christchurch to Invercargill is promised for mid-2027 with councils asked to help pay, Stats NZ shows the South Island's visitor districts adding people while Wellington and Dunedin lose them, Dunedin moteliers open bills up as much as 40 percent, and the Government finds Rotorua Airport the intersection NZTA would not.

By the Shoulder Season desk

A red train running beside a green hillside in Wellington
Photo by Joao Marcelo Martins on Unsplash

It’s Monday, the last week of the election campaign, and the regional development money is flowing south and to Rotorua. Here’s what’s moving.

A regular passenger train is promised between Christchurch and Invercargill from mid-2027

Rail Minister Winston Peters announced on Saturday that the Southerner will return on a regular timetable next year, the ODT reported. The mechanism is a $3.4 million loan from the Regional Infrastructure Fund to Mainland Rail, which owns its own carriages and will move its Mainlander train from monthly excursions to scheduled services calling at Christchurch, Ashburton, Timaru, Oamaru, Dunedin, Gore and Invercargill, starting in mid-2027. On Sunday the same package was extended to a 12-month commuter trial, with morning and evening trains from Rangiora and Rolleston into central Christchurch. Regional Development Minister Shane Jones put the Rolleston trip at under 20 minutes by rail against 50 by road, and named South Island tourism among the benefits. Frequencies and fares have not been announced.

The money is the part to watch. RNZ reported that councils are expected to cover a $1.7 million gap and have not yet signed off, with letters of support so far from Christchurch, Selwyn and Waimakariri only. Passenger fares are expected to cover half of the trial’s $6.8 million operating budget. Invercargill mayor Tom Campbell said ratepayers should not be asked to fund a train while the Government tells councils to hold rates down, and that a 12-month trial is too short to invest in. His other line was drier: “You’d almost think there’s a general election coming up.”

For visitor businesses the interest is the southern half. A scheduled train linking Ōtautahi, Ōamaru, Dunedin and Southland would give independent travellers a car-free way down the east coast that has not existed since 2002, when the daily Southerner stopped for lack of passengers. Whether that holds depends on the timetable, the fare and a year of results, none of which exist yet. Peters also said he expects the service to call at Mataura once its restored station reopens in late 2027.

Stat of the day

2002

The last year a daily Southerner ran between Christchurch and Invercargill, after a service that began in 1970. (RNZ, ODT)

Source: ODT, RNZ, RNZ

The visitor districts are adding people while six cities lose them

Two-thirds of New Zealand’s council and Auckland local board areas grew in the year to June, and the ten fastest-growing were all in Auckland or the South Island, Stats NZ’s new subnational estimates show. Selwyn led again, up 2.9 percent to 90,800 people. Six cities shrank: Wellington by 0.6 percent, Dunedin by 0.5 percent, Nelson, Palmerston North and Napier by 0.2 percent each, and Porirua by 0.1 percent.

Infometrics principal economist Nick Brunsdon told RNZ that tourism is doing a lot of the work in the South Island, naming Hurunui, Mackenzie, Southland, Central Otago and Queenstown Lakes among the strongest growers. “With more tourists, you need more staff to look after them,” he said, and that staff increasingly arrive from overseas. Wellington’s population is back to 2017 levels after the city lost about 6,000 jobs in three years, he said.

Read from the operator’s side, this is a labour market map. The districts where visitors are growing are importing the people to serve them, which keeps immigration settings and staff housing at the top of any regional tourism agenda. The cities that are shrinking are also two of the country’s main conference and events markets, which makes their visitor economy more important to them, not less.

Source: Stats NZ, RNZ

Dunedin moteliers report rates rises of 21 to 40 percent

Dunedin motel owners are reporting commercial rates rises of between 21 and 40 percent, the ODT reported on Friday, under the headline that they had been “blindsided”. The full story is behind the paper’s subscriber wall, so the operators’ bills themselves could not be checked here.

The council’s own papers show where pressure of that kind comes from. Its 2026/27 rating method report says the 2025 general revaluation redistributed general rates between property categories: the total capital value of commercial property rose 13.4 percent while residential fell 2.2 percent, lifting commercial’s share of the city’s rateable value from 15.3 to 17.3 percent. Commercial property, the category the council has rated hotels and motels under, already pays 2.5 times the residential rate in the dollar. The report says a full review of that differential will come in the 2027-37 10 Year Plan.

That review is the moment that matters for accommodation owners, because a differential set to protect households lands squarely on the businesses that sell beds. It is also the same city where the population fell last year, so the rating base is not growing to share the load.

Source: ODT, Dunedin City Council

Rotorua Airport gets the intersection NZTA would not pay for

The Government will put a $3.46 million Regional Infrastructure Fund grant into traffic lights at the junction of State Highway 30 and Wahanga-A-Rangi Crescent, the entrance to the Eastgate business park beside Rotorua Airport, NZ Herald reported on Sunday. Ministers Shane Jones and Chris Bishop announced it. Earlier in the year NZTA had declined to fund the work, preferring a $10 million roundabout and saying traffic had not yet reached the levels to justify either, while the council held a $3.2 million tender for lights and was weighing borrowing for it.

Airport chief executive Nicole Brewer called the intersection “a key priority” for the airport’s wider site development. The council will manage the build, with work expected to start within a few months, subject to final confirmation and contractors. Mayor Tania Tapsell was candid about the route taken: the city had been able to “jump the line”.

The useful point for other regional airports is the route itself. Land around a terminal is often a council’s best underused asset, and access is usually what holds it back. Where the transport agency says no on traffic numbers, the regional fund has now shown twice in two days that it will say yes on development grounds.

Source: NZ Herald

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