Good Easter for retail, struggling hospo sees hope

The Easter season saw more people pulling out their wallet, according to research released by Worldline NZ.
Core retail merchants saw a rise in spending when compared to the same period pre-COVID, while hospitality saw a dip when compared to the same period pre-COVID, but a rise when compared to the pre-Delta lockdown in 2021.
Consumer spending through core retail merchants (excluding hospitality) in Worldline’s payments network reached $652.6m for the seven days up to Easter Monday, April 18. This was 12 per cent up on the same period in 2019, and similar to the growth seen during March 2022.
Meanwhile, spending at hospitality merchants for the same period reached $202.8m, down seven per cent on the Easter week ending Monday, April 22, 2019, but an improvement on the average 23 per cent decline seen over the past eight months, following the Delta lockdown that began in August 2021.
This increasing spending at hospitality merchants continued the momentum of the gradual recovery of this sector seen in Worldline’s data from March 2022, with the gap between pre-COVID spending levels in 2019 narrowing again over Easter.
This year, Saturday was an especially busy shopping day, with core retail spending on 16 April in Auckland/Northland up 10 per cent on the previous Saturday, April 9, rising $6m to $64.7m.
The smaller regions experienced a proportionally larger increase, although it was smaller in dollar terms, as people travelled away from the larger centres for the Easter break.
The highest Saturday-to-Saturday jump was 57 per cent ($0.5m) in the West Coast region, followed by 37 per cent ($0.6m) in Wairarapa.
Outside Auckland/Northland, the next largest Saturday-to-Saturday jump in dollar terms was in Bay of Plenty, up $3.5m or 32 per cent.
Across the entire four-day Easter long weekend, spending levels this year were similar to those seen last year, but notably were eight per cent above the pre-COVID Easter of 2019.
The regions recording the highest year-on-year core retail growth rates over the four-day Easter weekend were generally around the lower half of the North Island.
Wellington remains the exception within this wider region, with Easter spending slightly down on 2021.
Meanwhile, the highest growth was seen in Taranaki, up eight per cent on last year and 26 per cent on 2019, while spending over the four days of Easter was below 2019 and 2021 levels in Marlborough and Otago.