International Travel 13 November

International travel covers the number and characteristics of overseas visitors and New Zealand resident travellers (short-term movements) entering or leaving New Zealand.

Key facts

Annual arrivals
Monthly arrivals - overseas visitors
Monthly arrivals - New Zealand-resident travellers
Border crossings
Update to seasonal adjustment

Annual arrivals

Overseas visitor arrivals were 3.23 million in the September 2024 year, an increase of 463,000 from the September 2023 year. The biggest changes were in arrivals from:

• China (up 140,000 to 246,000)
• Australia (up 73,000 to 1.33 million)
• United States (up 55,000 to 359,000).

New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals were 2.96 million in the September 2024 year, an increase of 480,000 from the September 2023 year. The biggest changes were in arrivals from:

• Australia (up 249,000 to 1.2 million)
• China (up 81,000 to 143,000)
• Japan (up 30,000 to 70,000)
• Indonesia (up 26,000 to 77,000).

Monthly arrivals - overseas visitors

Overseas visitor arrivals were 226,900 in September 2024, an increase of 2,000 from September 2023. The biggest changes were in arrivals from:

• Australia (up 4,100)
• China (up 1,500)
• United States (up 1,000).

The total number of overseas visitor arrivals in September 2024 was 87 percent of the 261,800 in September 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic).

Of New Zealand's five largest sources of overseas visitor arrivals, only India has been above pre-pandemic levels in most months over the last year.

Of the 226,900 overseas visitor arrivals in September 2024:

• 54 percent were from Australia (compared with 51 percent in September 2019)
• 9 percent were from China (11 percent in September 2019)
• 6 percent were from the United States (6 percent in September 2019)
• 3 percent were from the United Kingdom (3 percent in September 2019)
• 3 percent were from India (2 percent in September 2019).

Monthly arrivals - New Zealand-resident travellers

New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals were 261,300 in September 2024, an increase of 6,400 from September 2023. The biggest changes were in arrivals from:

• Australia (up 5,800)
• Indonesia (up 3,300)
• Fiji (up 3,100)
• China (up 2,400)
• Japan (up 1,200)
• India (up 1,000)
• New Caledonia (down 1,300)
• United States (down 1,000).

The total number of New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals in September 2024 was 93 percent of the 279,800 in September 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic).

Of the 261,300 New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals in September 2024:

• 39 percent were from Australia (compared with 40 percent in September 2019)
• 9 percent were from Fiji (7 percent in September 2019)
• 6 percent were from the United States (8 percent in September 2019)
• 6 percent were from the United Kingdom (6 percent in September 2019).

Border crossings

There were 997,000 border crossings in September 2024, made up of 498,900 arrivals and 498,100 departures. In September 2023 there were 983,600 border crossings.

September 2024 border crossings were 92 percent of the 1.08 million in September 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Update to seasonal adjustment

With the release of August 2023 data in October 2023, we resumed publication of seasonally adjusted and trend series for international travel. This followed a long interruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This resumption was possible after we developed a methodology to bridge the period interrupted by COVID-19-related travel and border restrictions. Methodology for bridging seasonally adjusted international travel and migration series impacted by COVID-19 has more detailed information on how the bridges were created.

In the methodology paper we committed to an annual review of the bridging series.

Following a review in October 2024, we have changed the calculation of the end point of the bridge (known as T1, and corresponding to January 2023 for monthly series, and the March 2023 quarter for quarterly series) to use deseasonalised values rather than actual values. 'Deseasonalising' means taking the true underlying value and dividing it by the relevant seasonal component. This is desirable as the underlying data for calculating the bridge is trend-based.

Across most international travel series this change improved the fit of the seasonal adjustment model around the bridged period. This meant the trends tended to be smoother with more consistent seasonal patterns and less irregularity.

The graphs below show the effect of the change to the seasonally adjusted series for New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals and overseas visitor arrivals.

This change does not affect periods before January 2023. Since the release of January 2024 data in March 2024, seasonally adjusted and trend series up to and including February 2020 are no longer revised, to avoid any unintended revisions in the historical series caused by recent data. Seasonally adjusted series from March 2020 to December 2022 continue to reflect actual values without seasonal adjustment, and trend series remain suppressed.

We will continue to review the bridging methodology annually. Future reviews may result in revisions to previously released trend and seasonally adjusted values.

Digital arrival card

A digital arrival card (New Zealand Traveller Declaration - NZTD) is available to travellers who have entered New Zealand from mid-July 2023, alongside the existing paper arrival card. Christchurch and Wellington airports were the first to use the NZTD, followed by Queenstown airport in late July 2023 and Auckland airport in late August 2023.

Data from July 2023 onwards therefore includes a growing proportion of digital responses, although paper responses are still the majority. In September 2024, 2 in 5 of all traveller arrivals completed the digital NZTD.

The implementation of the NZTD has no impact on the range of statistical information available to international travel and migration customers.

Early and provisional international travel data

Each week, Stats NZ releases early and provisional international travel statistics - International travel (provisional) - to facilitate analysis of New Zealand's inbound and outbound tourism sectors.

This includes:

• weekly travel data for short-term overseas visitor and New Zealand-resident arrivals
• arrivals and departures data based solely on border crossings into and out of New Zealand
• stock estimates of visitors in New Zealand and New Zealand residents travelling overseas, based on arrivals and departures.

More data

Use Infoshare to access time-series data for international travel and migration:

Subject category: Tourism
Group: International travel and migration - ITM

Definitions and metadata

International travel - DataInfo+ gives general methodology used to produce international travel and migration statistics.

International travel concepts - DataInfo+ gives definitions of terms used in this release.

Subnational short-term NZ-resident arrivals - DataInfo+ gives methodology for determining the New Zealand-location information in short-term New Zealand-resident arrival records.

Technical enquiries

Mosiana Ha'unga
03 964 8838
[email protected]

ISSN 2624-2710

Next release

International travel: October 2024 will be released on 13 December 2024.