Last week marked five years since the first case of COVID-19 was reported in New Zealand. In the same week Statistics New Zealand reported that international tourism has returned to pre-COVID-19 levels. Those are two very important milestones to contemplate. It has taken five years but now that we are back to 2019 levels of tourism it is timely to consider where to from here? And specifically what ever happened to the post-COVID tourism re-set?
References:
Statistics New Zealand (2025). Tourism Satellite Account – Year ended March 2024.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/tourism-satellite-account-year-ended-march-2024
Tourism Industry Aotearoa (2025). Tourism boosts employment and drives the economy.
https://www.tia.org.nz/news-and-updates/industry-news/big-numbers-reinforce-big-impact-of-tourism
Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (2019). Pristine, popular… imperilled? The environmental consequence of tourism growth. December 2019. https://pce.parliament.nz/publications/pristine-popular-imperilled-the-environmental-consequences-of-projected-tourism-growth/
Mood of the Nation (2015-2020). Tourism Industry Aotearoa and Tourism New Zealand
https://www.tia.org.nz/resources-and-tools/insight/mood-of-the-nation
Tourism Futures Taskforce (2020). We are Aotearoa. Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). December 2020. https://www.mbie.govt.nz/assets/the-tourism-futures-taskforce-interim-report-december-2020.pdf
Tourism Industry Aotearoa (2020). Tourism Carbon Challenge. December 2020. https://www.tia.org.nz/news-and-updates/industry-news/tourism-industry-challenge-to-cut-carbon/
Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (2021). February 2021. Not 100% – but four steps closer to sustainable tourism. https://pce.parliament.nz/publications/not-100-but-four-steps-closer-to-sustainable-tourism/
The Aotearoa Circle (2023). Tourism Adaptation Roadmap (May 2023). https://www.theaotearoacircle.nz/tourism-adaptation-roadmap
Transcript:
Last week marked two significant milestones. Firstly, it was five years since the first case of COVID-19 was reported in New Zealand. Secondly, Statistics New Zealand reported that international tourism spending has returned to pre-COIVD levels. Meaning that we have now recovered to 2019 levels of tourism.
A reminder: What was tourism like in 2019 and how far did we fall? The 2010s was a decade of unprecedented and sustained high growth tourism, both globally and in New Zealand. The growth in global tourism reached a crisis point in the northern summer of 2017 due to what has been called ‘overtourism’. In that summer the sheer number of visitors arriving a places such as Venice, Barcelona, Dubrovnik and Santorini, reached breaking point. Local residents became so exasperated by the crowding, congestion and inconvenience caused by visitors that protests against tourism took place in many European destinations.
New Zealand was no exempt from overtourism concerns. Despite distance from many of its source markets, tourism in New Zealand began to feel the strain of visitor demand and social licence in some destination communities began to decline as the decade of the 2010s advanced. Such was the growing levels of concerns that the environmental impacts of sustained high growth tourism became the focus of a programme of research initiated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in 2018.
His first report was made public in the week before Christmas in December 2019. It reported on the history of tourism development in New Zealand and the growth of social and environmental pressures of tourism when the economic and employment outcomes of tourism are the dominant driver of development. It provided the context for a second report, due to be made public the following year, that would outline policy recommendations for government to address the environmental impacts and costs of tourism. Within two weeks of the first report being made public COVID-19 was reported to the World Health Organisation following an outbreak in Wuhan, China.
The immediate consequences of COVID-19 for tourism are well known. At the start of the 2010s global tourism was close to 900 million international visitors per annum. By the end of that decade 1.461 billion tourists travelled internationally in 2019. This represents a remarkable and unprecedented level of growth in tourism across that decade. The COVID-19 pandemic decimated international travel, which in 2020 dropped by 1.1 billion travellers, to 381 million. Fewer than had travelled internationally in the last year of the 1980s. This represented a 74% decline in international travel.
By comparison, the SARS epidemic in 2003 saw a reduction of 2 million international travellers or 0.4%. The global financial crisis resulted in a drop of 37 million travellers in 2009, or 4.0%. The collapse of global tourism in 2020 was completely unprecedented in scale. In New Zealand, where international arrivals were approaching 4 million visitors a year and forecast to reach 5 million international arrivals in 2024, the border closed in March 2020 and international tourism stopped completely.
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So what has Statistics New Zealand actually reported. StatsNZ released its annual tourism satellite figures for the year ended March 2024 last week. It revealed that in the year to March 2024 New Zealand tourism returned to levels of international visitor spending similar to 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, international tourism expenditure in that year was up 60% to $16.9 billion. The same figure in 2019 was $17.2 billion.
The largest increase in visitor arrivals in 2024 came from Asia which was up 168% on the previous year. Asia and particularly China have been relatively slow to return to international tourism after COVID-19 but the Asian markets have finally showed signs of recovery. Visitors from the Americas, Europe and Oceania were all up 59, 26 and 18% respectively.
International tourist spending returned to pre-Covid levels, although domestic visitor spending in New Zealand has dropped according to the TSA, no doubt due to a combination of the cost of living crisis with domestic tourism belt tightening, as well as Kiwis taking the opportunity to travel internationally again after the border closures of COVID times.
That said, domestic tourism expenditure dropped by 2.5% to $27.5b, following an 11% (or $2.8 billion) increase in 2023. So despite the reporting, domestic tourism remains a strong feature of New Zealand tourism – which is critically important.
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Of course it is great news that tourism has rebounded and this has been celebrated by the tourism industry. Tourism, we know, is critically important to the New Zealand economy. Livelihoods in the visitor economy depend on it. Rebecca Ingram at TIA commented that “The results follow a flurry of positive tourism announcements made by the Government this month aimed at supporting the industry’s ongoing growth and conservation efforts. It is an exciting time for the sector, and we look forward to continuing to work alongside the Minister for Tourism and Hospitality as she progresses her Tourism Boost plans”.
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It is this focus on ongoing growth that leads me to ask what happened to the post-COVID-tourism re-set? The context for this question is important, although it seems to have been quickly forgotten. Between 2010-2019 New Zealand received unprecedented and largely unmanaged growth in international visitor arrivals. While the economics of tourism growth were widely celebrated during this time, this was the cause of increasing social and environmental stress as the decade advanced. As the decade advanced, New Zealand tourism was considered to have been reaching its own breaking points. Three significant pieces of reporting gave expression to the growing tourism crisis.
First, from 2015 TIA and TNZ produced the ‘Mood of the Nation’ report, recognising the importance of continued community support for tourism. As the decade advanced it reported that community support for tourism was declining. Continuing high growth in visitor arrivals was causing more New Zealanders to feeling worried about increasing tourism pressures on iconic environments and destination communities.
Secondly, the Milford Opportunities Group was convened by the government in 2017, under the direction of MBIE and DOC to investigate the management of relentless growth in visitor demand for Piopiotahi Milford Sound, with a view to sustainable outcomes and resilience.
Thirdly, as noted previously, in 2018 the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton, embarked on a programme of research into the environmental impacts of sustained high growth tourism. This was, in and of itself, confirmation of the significant environmental impacts of tourism. His first report addressed the environmental and cultural impacts of tourism and warned what business-as-usual growth was likely to mean for the environment and the vulnerability of the tourism sector.
He reported that sustained high growth has eroding the very attributes that make Aotearoa New Zealand such an attractive country to visit. The existing policy mix was, in his view, unlikely to prevent a worsening of tourism’s environmental burden, and that a different approach will be needed to head off that future.
At the time New Zealand was on course to receive 5 million international visitors in 2024. A prospect that only risked worsening social and environmental outcomes from tourism. It is important to remember this context, because it explains why for many the COVID pause in tourism in 2020 came as somewhat of a relief. When the borders closed in March 2020, many tourism industry and government players quickly resolved that COVID-19 might provide a circuit breaker that would allow the investment of much careful consideration into a so-called “tourism re-set”. Essentially COVID-19 provided a window of opportunity to consider how we might do tourism differently.
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What followed can only be described as an unprecedented investment of time and resources, and an enormous mobilisation of expertise and concentration of energy into the ‘post-COVID re-set’. This was intended to highlight how things could and should be done differently. This concentration of energy saw an unprecedented coming together of government policy makers, business leaders, tourism associations, academics researchers, community groups and other visionaries. Some of the key outputs of this period of intense energy, that seem now to have been largely forgotten, should be recalled:
Perhaps most notably in 2020 the government under the leadership of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment created the Tourism Futures Taskforce. The taskforce was a cross-sector, Minister-appointed initiative. Its leadership and membership included some of the most visionary tourism leaders from industry, business and policy circles. In December 2020 it submitted its report titled ‘We are Aotearoa’. The principles underpinning this report were informed by the Māori values of sustainability, care and responsibility, prosperity and kinship and connectedness.
It addressed in different sections the conditions needed for the industry to transform and thrive, protection of Te Taiao by making tangible commitments to the environment, empowerment and communities’ self determination to localise destination management plans, connection between people symbolic of embracing people as whanau, and navigating future pathways and strategies. ‘We Are Aotearoa’ was widely considered to be inspiring, providing a road map for the post-COVID re-set, although at the time we had no idea when the re-opening of tourism might occur.
In the same month Tourism Industry Aotearoa produced the Tourism Carbon Challenge (December 2020). It called for every tourism business to measure its carbon footprint, and take action to significantly reduce carbon emissions by 2030, in alignment with a tourism industry commitment to net zero carbon ahead of New Zealand’s 2050 climate goals. It presented the climate crisis as a global problem with local solutions, targeting individual businesses to take immediate action to accurately measure and significantly reduce emissions by 2030.
Two months later in February 2021 the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s second report was released, titled ‘Not 100% – but four steps closer to sustainable tourism’. It urged the Government to take advantage of the pause in international tourism to transform the sector to one with a substantially smaller environmental footprint, while safeguarding livelihoods and the commercial viability of New Zealand’s tourism-related businesses.
The Parliamentary Commissioner noted that the discontinuity created by the pandemic offers an opportunity to address some of tourim’s long-standing environmental and social issues. Four major recommendations were presented: high aviation emissions associated with long-haul international visitor markets; central government funding of infrastructure aligned with mana whenua and local community visions for tourism development; tightening rules for tourism on conservation land and waters; and addressing standards for self-contained freedom camping.
In 2021-2022 the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and Regional Tourism New Zealand oversaw the development of regional tourism plans for all 31 RTOs in New Zealand. All regional destinations in New Zealand were funded by MBIE to create Destination Management Plans in consultation with local communities, to ensure that tourism supports thriving and sustainable regions through the delivery of exceptional visitor experiences and improving productivity outcomes, while protecting Aotearoa’s natural environment, culture and historic heritage to ensure that New Zealanders’ lives are improved by tourism. The principles of regenerative tourism and climate action are central to DMPs but unfortunately funding for implementation of those plans has not been forthcoming.
Finally, in May 2023, following another extraordinary assembling of tourism visionaries and experts, the Aotearoa Circle produced the ‘Tourism Adaptation Roadmap’. This roadmap gave expression to a real desire from the industry to change direction and embed sustainability into the future of tourism. This has emerged from recognition of growing global concerns regarding climate change, environmental degradation and wider sustainability issues. The Aotearoa Circle presented an adaptation roadmap for the industry based on future climate scenarios and the directions that must be taken today to future-proof regenerative tourism in New Zealand and build sector resilience.
During this time the Milford Opportunities Group has produced its final report and recommendations for the new coalition government. It provides a vision for the future management of all aspects of tourism and resilience at Piopiotahi. Currently their reports and recommendations remain on the desks of ministers in Wellington while, understandably, the industry in Piopiotahi calls through the media for clarity on pathways forward. This includes an assessment of the economic impacts and environmental costs and risks of cruise ship visits to Piopiotahi and the Te Wahipounamu UNESCO World Heritage fiords.
Speaking of those risks, listeners may be aware of the tipping event in Milford Sound last week. The Crown Princess tilted dangerously due to strong winds in the fiord, causing injuries to 16 passengers and crew, damage and flooding from a swimming pool. Such risks are not insignificant and have been addressed by the Milford Opportunities Group.
There were other outputs relating to a tourism re-set after COVID-19. But these major reports are sufficient to make the point that the tourism re-set was a very real thing. Most importantly, it was New Zealanders, particularly those in communities that had faced the growing stresses of tourism during the 2010s, who wanted a different tourism after COVID-19.
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The collective efforts involved in creating an alternative sustainable and resilient post-COVID future for tourism in Aotearoa New Zealand were truly extraordinary. I know, because I know many of the people who so generously contributed their time and expertise to this collective effort. At the 2023 Tourism Policy School, I described the outcomes of this effort as an ‘unprecedented consensus’.
It must be said that the tourism industry was completely crippled by COVID-19. Many livelihoods were lost. The social and individual impacts of those unprecedented times were both immediate and long-lasting. There is no doubt that people suffered enormously, and it is understandable that when the borders re-opened the focus fell immediately upon the priority of rebuilding tourism, rebuilding the tourism workforce and rebuilding livelihoods.
But with the results published last week by Statistics New Zealand, it is also noteworthy that the pressures of tourism growth have returned to destination communities. In Queenstown the social acceptance of tourism and the social and environmental stresses associated with high volume tourism is now lower than prior to COVID-19.
Perhaps now that the tourism economy has returned to pre-COVID levels, it is timely to revisit those urgent calls to achieve a more sustainable and climate resilient tourism for the future, and the urgency felt during the COVID-19 pause to do tourism differently. To date the calls for a tourism reset have fallen on deaf ears. But while the government focusses exclusively on high tourism growth, those calls are now gathering momentum again.
