The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment will be suspending their releases of the Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates
The last release was published in early December 2020, showing the October 2020 data, and past releases will remain on the MBIE website.
“MBIE is committed to providing high-quality, useful data for the tourism industry that can be relied on to inform decision making,” says a statement from MBIE.
“COVID-19 has changed the tourism landscape so much that we can no longer rely on the model we have used to estimate the regional tourism spend. Following an internal review of the MRTEs, we have found the methodology that underpins the estimates is no longer fit-for-purpose.
“We have taken this proactive step to make sure the data the industry is using to plan for the future, is as robust as it can be.”
The release says an interim measure has been developed to fill this hole in tourism data.
This measure will estimate regional tourism spend and will be available from today for the November 2020 month data.
The new estimates – the Tourism Electronic Card Transactions release – only includes tourism-related electronic card transactions paid through EFTPOS machines, says the statement.
This data will not include other types of tourism spending, for example cash, online or pre-purchase spending (mainly done by overseas visitors before arriving onshore), as these are the areas where we have the most concern for in the MRTE methodology.
“The estimates we publish will use the most robust data available and will allow us to track the regional performance of the sector with confidence, with a specific focus on domestic tourism expenditure,” says the MBIE statement.
“This is an interim measure as we work across Government and industry for ways to improve how we measure regional tourism spend.
“While this new measure cannot be compared directly to previous MRTEs, we hope that as this new data set contains three years’ worth of data, it will still be a valuable tool for the industry.
“This is an incredibly difficult time for the industry and having a new tool to understand may be unsettling for those trying to plan for the future.
“We’d like to thank you for your patience and understanding with this change and look forward to working closely with you and the industry on creating sustainable data tools.”
More information on the TECTs
Tourism electronic card transactions fell 14 per cent across New Zealand.
Overall tourism ECT expenditure fell 14 per cent for the year ending November compared with the previous year. The November 2020 month also fell 14 per cent compared with the same month a year earlier.
“COVID-19 started to impact tourism in New Zealand around February 2020. As the most up-to-date figures only goes to November 2020, we expect the annual year-on-year percentage changes to keep on falling until we have 12 months’ worth of data following the closure of borders around the world. “This will be most pronounced over the summer months – usually the high season for international tourism. This is likely be seen most clearly in regions and products more reliant on the international market.”
Auckland tourism ECT transactions were down 31 per cent, Otago down 27 per cent, the West Coast down 25 per cent and Southland down 12 per cent in the November 2020 month compared with the same month a year earlier. Gisborne, traditionally a domestic hotspot, had the strongest growth of all regions in November, showing a rise of 24 per cent.
For the November 2020 month, most regions showed growth in domestic tourism ECT spend, with the exception of Auckland. However, large falls in other spend (which includes international spend) offset those rises in many regions. As has been the trend, tourism regions with historically high proportions of international visitation were the worst hit.
The current release showed that total New Zealand tourism electronic card transactions spend was approximately $10.9b for the year ended November 2020. This is just under half of what was previously published as part of the MRTEs, due to electronic card transactions only making up part of all tourism spend.
