Domestic tourism spending recovers

Media statement
Tuesday 6 December 2011 – for immediate release
Domestic tourism spending recovers

Domestic tourism spending recovered in the year to September 2011 to high levels last approached in 2009. New Zealanders spent $9.4 billion on trips within New Zealand, a 10.7 percent rise from the previous year.

The Ministry of Economic Development’s latest Domestic Travel Survey has found that business travel and related expenditure increased particularly significantly.

Business travellers spent $3.1 billion – 21.5 percent more than the same period last year.

Domestic holidaymakers spent a total of $3.2 billion – 0.9 percent more than last year.

Travellers visiting friends spent $2.7 billion – 11.8 percent more than last year.

“This is a good result for the tourism industry, showing a recovery from the difficult economic times of 2010” said Peter Ellis, Tourism Research and Evaluation Manager at the Ministry of Economic Development. “The strength of domestic travel in the past year has helped compensate for the many challenges in international tourism.”

Other findings
• The total number of trips increased by 10.8 percent to 48.2 million for the year to September 2011 compared to the year to September 2010
• Overnight trips increased by 4.1 percent to 16.6 million
• Travellers spent 49.1 million nights away from home – an average of almost three (2.95) nights per overnight trip.
• The number of day trips increased 14.6 percent to 31.5 million

The Domestic Travel Survey is an annual phone survey of 15,000 New Zealand residents undertaken throughout the year. Data quality was adversely affected (around one percent of additional potential error) because some interviews scheduled for Canterbury in September 2010 were postponed to October 2011 due to the 4 September 2010 earthquake. After the 22 February earthquake, planned interviews of Christchurch residents in February and March were replaced by calls to residents of other regions. Survey data and reports are available at: www.tourismresearch.govt.nz/dts.

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