Tourism volumes and flows data to be a “critical enabler” for tourism
Data insights will play a key part in our tourism strategy, says Tourism Industry Aotearoa chief executive Rebecca Ingram.
By Naomii Seah, AccomNews writer, reporting from TRENZ 2025.
Tourism volumes and flows data will be available for businesses from November.
The new datasets were announced by the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) in early May. Tourism volumes and flows will be the first of the “priority datasets” that will be made available for the tourism sector, and it will show mobility data for visitors to New Zealand. Historical data from January 2024 will also be made available as part of this dataset.
The dataset will be available on the Tourism Evidence and Insights Centre, and will be provided by Christchurch company Vistr.
Other datasets that will soon be made available include monthly regional tourism estimates, showing spend estimates, and community sentiment data, which will monitor buy-in from locals.
Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA) Chief Executive Rebecca Ingram said that TIA had been working alongside MBIE for the past years to develop visitor flows information. Ensuring the tourism industry has strong data insights will be key for sustainable growth, said Ingram.
“I always think about making sure businesses have good information, because if you’re trying to make a decision around where to invest, if you’re trying to expand your hotel, if you’re trying to upgrade, if you’re thinking about adding a new experience to your product sector, you want good information.”
At the TRENZ tourism briefing on Wednesday 7 May, Ms Ingram described data as a “critical enabler” and said real-time visitor insight would be a “game changer” for the industry. She said data was one of TIA’s main focuses for the near future, as well as growing skills through investment into people.
“All these things form a very important part of helping our members, tourism businesses understand what’s happening in tourism.”
Ms Ingram says TIA will be creating a resource to enable members to easily access this data. It is hoped this new resource will be launched later this year.
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