School Holidays
Domestic Tourism Report.
A snapshot of domestic tourism from 04 July – 19 July 2020
ALL REGIONS
Saw an increase in domestic visitors compared to last year’s winter school holidays.
The number of Kiwis travelling across the country peaked on Sunday 11 July with 550,000 people outside their home regions. Smaller peaks of 440,000 and 420,000 were recorded on the first and last Sundays of the holiday break. These are the highest levels of domestic travel recorded since lockdown began in March.
1,816
More New Zealanders visited Kaikōura - a 56.2% increase on the previous year, the largest across all regions.
30,000
More New Zealanders were outside of their home region at the peak of school holiday travel compared to Queen’s Birthday weekend.
How are these insights produced?
Data Ventures is working together with the major telecommunication companies in New Zealand. Using the aggregated and anonymised mobile data[*] provided to them, along with Stats NZ expertise, Data Ventures has created population estimates of residents and visitors in New Zealand every hour down to suburb level. Read more in the footnotes section.
A view of tourism across New Zealand.
Covid-19 Alert Level 1 has allowed us to get out and explore more of our own backyard. With restrictions on international visitors entering New Zealand it’s now worth looking at how tourism has changed across our country. To do that we have highlighted international and domestic visitor numbers, as well as our mobility index.[*].
We describe a domestic visitor as someone who is outside of their local tourism region. These regions are defined by Regional Tourism Organisations.
The mobility index is a measurement to understand changes in inter-regional movement. A positive number indicates an increase in movement against a baseline. A negative number indicates a decrease.
Domestic Visitors
550K
PEAK DOMESTIC VISITORS
IN THE LAST TWO WEEKS
Domestic population
550K
PEAK DOMESTIC VISITORS
IN THE LAST TWO WEEKS
International Visitors
120K
International visitors
IN THE LAST two WEEKS
International population
120K
International visitors
IN THE LAST two WEEKS
National mobility index
Highest
levels of national mobility since
the COVID-19 period
National mobility index
Highest
levels of national mobility since
the COVID-19 period
The fluctuations seen in mobility during the school holiday period suggests that Kiwis travel to their holiday destinations during the weekend and travel to local attractions during the week. It could also mean that Kiwis are taking smaller weekend trips during the school holiday period.
NOTE: The vertical lines represent COVID-19 Alert Levels as they progressed, starting at the first line when NZ borders closed, through to our current alert level.
The change in domestic visitor numbers across tourism regions.
In this section we explore domestic visitor numbers before, during and after the COVID-19 lockdown periods. These are presented by each of the 35 tourism areas across New Zealand. The current list of tourism regions that we use can be found on the Stats NZ Ariā definitions website.
Note: Click on the graphs to view a larger version.
The change in domestic visitor numbers year on year.
This section compares domestic visitor numbers from this year’s school holidays (Saturday 4 July – Sunday 19 July 2020) to last year’s (Saturday 6 July – Sunday 21 July 2019). This comparison shows how COVID-19 and the subsequent border closure may have influenced more Kiwis to holiday at home this year. The current list of tourism regions that we use can be found on Stats NZ Ariā.
2019 WINTER SCHOOL HOLIDAYS vs 2020 WINTER SCHOOL HOLIDAYS
2019 WINTER SCHOOL HOLIDAYS vs 2020 WINTER SCHOOL HOLIDAYS
Interested in knowing more?
We can work with our wide range of data providers to help you towards any recovery strategy for COVID-19 and beyond.
