Waikato could be heading into its strongest summer tourism season since the pandemic as international visitor numbers sky-rocket.
Momentum is building with the number of international tourists coming to New Zealand for August 2026 reaching 99% of the 251,000 who arrived in August 2019, according to Stats NZ data released on Wednesday.
One tourist hotspot, the Hobbiton Movie Set in Matamata, is ahead of the curve with international visitation reaching pre-COVID levels two years ago, the attraction's general tourism manager, Shayne Forrest, said.
Re-investing into the product and slightly shrinking capacity numbers has kept the experience high quality and a “must-do” for tourists, Forrest added, with the wider impact being a cash injection into the local economy.
“One of the changes we’ve seen... is more of those international tourists are coming outside those peak periods which is actually what we want to encourage as an industry,” Forrest said.
Forrest said the Australian and American markets were the first to return to help Hobbiton’s numbers bounce back, while New Zealand’s perception as a “desirable, safe destination” also helped.
“We’re only one very small piece of the puzzle as far as an international attraction goes,” he said.
“As a region and a country we need to be working together to make sure we’re making the most of the opportunity and giving those international visitors an amazing time when they choose to spend their time and money with us here in New Zealand.”
Nationally, Chinese visitor numbers rose 32% in August against the same month in 2019, while arrivals from Australia, New Zealand’s largest visitor market, increased 4.9%.
National Party tourism and hospitality spokesperson Louise Upston said visitors from the United States, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan were all up on last year.
Upston said the numbers showed “strong growth from markets around the world, even during our quieter winter months”.
Statistics have also been stronger than pre-pandemic for Destination Hauraki-Coromandel, with general manager Kylie Hawker-Green saying August international visitors were up 6% year on year.
Speaking from Sydney at a travel conference, Hawker-Green said a proactive effort to capture international markets, especially North America and Australia, had paid dividends in persuading visitors to stay longer and spend more.
“One of the reasons why we’re focused on international visitors is they do tend to spend more per day when they’re in region than what domestic visitors do, and that’s partly because of their travel patterns and behaviour,” Hawker-Green said.
“If you think about going on a boat cruise out to Cathedral Cove or paying to visit facilities... our international visitors get into holiday mode and buy tickets to go participate in those kinds of activities and really keep the visitor industry ticking over.”
Hawker-Green said specifically targeting travelling families and couples had proven successful for the tourism organisation, funded by the Thames-Coromandel and Hauraki district councils, which doesn’t have “particularly huge budgets”.
She said international tourists tend to visit year-round, unlike a typical seasonal domestic visitor, becoming a “backbone” for the industry’s survival.
She remained strongly hopeful this summer would be the biggest since the pandemic.
“We had a series of really bad weather events and we didn’t have a great summer in terms of our visitor economy.
“The domestic market completely dropped off but the international visitor market actually grew year on year...our domestic tourists took one look at the weather forecast and changed their plans.
“It’s really expensive to promote a region internationally... central government has put a lot more investment into those areas in the last 12 months that we’ve definitely been able to leverage and benefit from.”
Hawker-Green and Forrest are confident for the summer, with the former saying accommodation booking data was already looking strong.
“We are really confident it’s going to be a really strong summer... a lot of people are really looking forward to getting to Hauraki-Coromandel.”
