The Rugby World Cup in Japan boosted trips home by New Zealand residents in November 2019, Stats NZ has said.
New Zealand residents returned home from 233,700 trips in November 2019. This is an increase of 11,800 (5.3 perc ent) compared with November 2018. The largest increase was from Japan with 5800 more arrivals.
"The Rugby World Cup being hosted in Japan was a drawcard for New Zealand-resident travellers, based on the increased number of arrivals during and after the tournament," population indicators manager Tehseen Islam says.
The first match of the 2019 Rugby World Cup was on September 20, 2019 and the final was played on November 2, 2019. Using daily arrivals data from mid-September 2019 to mid-November 2019, around 8500 more New Zealand-resident arrivals from Japan were recorded than in the same period the year before.
This follows previous Rugby World Cup trends where more departures were made by New Zealand residents in the two-month World Cup window (September 1 to October 31) compared with the same period in the previous year. In 2007, there were around 9100 more departures to France and the United Kingdom, and in 2015, there were around 8200 more to the United Kingdom.
The total number of New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals for the year ended November 2019 was 3.08 million, up by 68,400 (2.3 per cent) from the year ended November 2018. This is the highest number of New Zealand-resident arrivals in a given 12-month period.
