It’s Friday, the election is tomorrow, and the campaign has taken most of the week’s oxygen. Four items, kept deep.
MBIE has paused its regional tourism spend estimates, so nobody can check the regions’ own numbers for now
MBIE did not publish the Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates due on 30 October, and says it is pausing the series indefinitely. Its notice on the Tourism Evidence and Insights Centre says a review of the method “identified concerns” that mean the series has to be reconsidered, and that it is working with Marketview, which supplies the card data, on a measure that is fit for purpose. In the meantime MBIE will bring back the older Tourism Electronic Card Transactions series from early 2027. The notice is clear about what that replacement does not do: it measures card spending by domestic and international visitors, and it does not estimate total tourism spend.
The MRTEs were the only official monthly view of visitor spending broken down by region, and they are the figure councils, regional tourism organisations and funders reach for when they want to show what a campaign or event did. This briefing used them too: the 31 August edition reported the July estimates, including a fall in domestic spend in Queenstown during the ski season. Readers should hold any MRTE figure published this year a little more loosely until MBIE says what the review found.
The timing is awkward. On Wednesday night ChristchurchNZ’s Winter Different campaign won the Collaboration award at the New Zealand Tourism Awards. It was backed by $600,000 of competitive MBIE funding and is credited with 7,539 extra Australian visitors in winter 2025, a 19.3 percent lift in winter arrivals into Christchurch, and an estimated $20.7 million to $25.1 million of economic uplift across six Central South Island regions. None of that is in doubt because of the pause, and the visitor count is a harder figure than the dollar range. But the dollar range is modelled by the campaign’s own side, and for at least the next few months there is no independent official series to set it against. B2B News made the same point this week. ChristchurchNZ has since won further regional funding for follow-up campaigns, and the gap matters most to the people deciding where the next round of that money goes.
Source: MBIE, Tourism Evidence and Insights Centre, NZ Herald, B2B News
Stat of the day
34 to 1
The return implied by the low end of Winter Different's estimated $20.7m uplift on its $600,000 grant, a modelled figure that no official regional series can now check. (ChristchurchNZ via NZ Herald; MBIE)
Hamilton Airport pays its councils a record $1 million dividend, and warns that fuel is capping growth
Waikato Regional Airport Ltd will pay its five council shareholders a $1 million dividend before Christmas, its largest ever, after its first return to profit since 2019. The company stressed that the profit does not rely on land sales or valuation changes. Hamilton City Council gets about $500,000, Waipā, Waikato and Matamata-Piako about $156,000 each, and Ōtorohanga close to $31,000. Last year’s dividend was $450,000, and it was $500,000 in both 2022 and 2023.
Chief executive Mark Morgan put the result down to the first full year of flights to Australia and the jet services to Christchurch added during the year, with a record 530,000 passengers through the terminal. The other engine is property: the Precinct North business park, whose first stage is complete, is expected to add significantly next year. Morgan noted that the councils have put in less than $15 million since buying the airport from the Crown in 1989, against assets now of $380 million.
The note of caution is the useful part for anyone else running a regional airport. Morgan said growth in the aeronautical business is being held back by persistently high fuel prices and that airlines value certainty, which is a polite way of saying new routes are hard to win right now. The model that works is the one Hamilton has built over a decade: an airport that is also a landlord, a hotel owner and, unusually, the owner of its region’s tourism organisation, Hamilton & Waikato Tourism, so that the land and the destination marketing both feed the runway.
Source: Waikato Regional Airport release via Scoop
Supercars returns to Ruapuna and Taupō on consecutive May weekends in 2027
Supercars has confirmed the 2027 ITM New Zealand Double Header: Ruapuna Raceway in Christchurch on 7 to 9 May, then Taupō International Motorsport Park on 14 to 16 May. The first Double Header this year drew a combined 95,368 people, the championship says, even though Taupō’s Sunday was cancelled by Cyclone Vaianu, and Christchurch sold out on both the Saturday and the Sunday.
May is one of the quietest months of the year for visitors in both cities, between the end of the autumn shoulder and the start of the ski season. Two back-to-back weekends of a touring Australian championship fill beds in exactly the weeks operators find hardest, and the six-day gap between rounds gives the teams and any travelling fans a reason to stay and travel between the islands rather than fly home. The weather risk is now known as well: the Taupō Sunday this year is a reminder that an autumn event needs a plan for losing a day.
Source: Supercars
October ran well above average across most of the South Island, and dry in the north
Earth Sciences New Zealand’s October climate summary has temperatures more than 1.2°C above average across most of the South Island, and above average in Nelson, Marlborough and much of the North Island. Soil moisture at the end of the month was lower than normal in Northland, Bay of Plenty, East Cape and parts of Waikato, and higher than normal from Kaikōura down the east coast to Dunedin and through central and western Otago. Auckland was the driest of the main centres and Tauranga the warmest and sunniest. Milford Sound recorded the month’s highest one-day rainfall, 251mm on 26 October.
For the summer ahead, the northern half of the North Island goes into the peak season drier than usual, which is worth watching for anyone running campgrounds, walks or water-dependent operations as fire seasons are set. In the south the picture is the reverse: warm, but with wetter than normal ground along most of the east coast.
Source: Earth Sciences New Zealand release via Scoop
Coming up
- 7 November: General election
- 9 November: Contractors move on site at Havelock marina
- 11 November: Princess Cruises’ 2028/29 Australia and New Zealand season opens for sale (Australian time)
- 14 November: Contractors start on the Hahei Beach Short Walk reroute
- 20 November: TranzAlpine runs Christchurch to Arthur’s Pass only until this date
- 22 November: Three Singapore services in a day at Christchurch, 1,560 seats on the route
- 25 November: Stats NZ’s supplementary population tables; Havelock marina community drop-in
- 28 November: Air New Zealand’s first Christchurch to Tokyo Narita service
- 30 November: Air New Zealand’s first Christchurch to Perth service
- 1 December: Paid parking starts at Cornwall Park, Auckland
- December: Reserve Bank’s next OCR decision
- Early 2027: MBIE resumes the Tourism Electronic Card Transactions series in place of the paused regional estimates
- 6 February 2027: Waitangi weekend deadline for user-pays at 33 Mackenzie toilet facilities
- 7-9 May 2027: Supercars at Ruapuna Raceway, Christchurch
- 14-16 May 2027: Supercars at Taupō International Motorsport Park
- 1 July 2027: New Border Processing Levy rates take effect
That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.