Traveller departures for people living in the Otago Region, New Zealand

The loss of information from the removal of the departure card means Stats NZ will no longer provide resident departure series.
From November 2018, resident arrivals is the only source of information for short-term travel of NZ residents.

New Zealand-resident travellers: people who live in New Zealand and are travelling overseas for less than 12 months.
Main destination: the country where a New Zealand-resident traveller will spend the most time while overseas. Departure cards do not ask travellers which other countries they intend to visit on the same trip.
New Zealand area: the area in New Zealand containing the residential or contact address stated on a passenger's arrival or departure card. Regional council areas are approximated by grouping territorial authority (city and district council) areas. Where a territorial authority area is split across regional council areas, it is fully included in the region that most of its population lives in.

http://datainfoplus.stats.govt.nz/Item/nz.govt.stats/f705ca38-ea6e-453f-b1d9-a95dc0fcaf59

A person may change their intentions after their arrival or departure, which may mean the recorded passenger type becomes incorrect. Stats NZ does not revise published statistics for such changes, but advises that the published figures remain a good indicator of trends in permanent and long-term migration.
Some fields are only collected for a sample of passengers. Data from the sample is used to estimate the characteristics of the full population. This still provides a good picture of the characteristics of travellers, while greatly decreasing the time and cost of capturing the data.
Data is derived from a sample of records and hence may contain sample error. Caution should be used when using data with low cell values.
New Zealand area data is not rebased when boundary changes occur. All data uses territorial authority boundaries which existed during the reference month.

From August 2016, international travel and migration data started being processed using a new, upgraded processing system. The new system uses improved methodology, which takes greater account of travellers' history in addition to intentions stated on the arrival and departure cards. It also makes greater use of automation in the processing and classification of passenger types. There were no revisions to the historical data with this system and methodology changes.

At URL provided, select 'Tourism > International Travel and Migration - ITM > NZ-resident traveller departures by main destination and NZ area (Annual-Dec)'. All variables were selected to produce this dataset.

International travel and migration statistics count passengers arriving into and departing from New Zealand. Passengers are split into one of three passenger types: overseas visitors, New Zealand-resident travellers, and permanent and long-term migrants.
Arrivals and departures of overseas visitors and New Zealand-resident travellers are key indicators of tourism and travel. Permanent and long-term migration is a component of New Zealand’s population change, along with births and deaths. Migration affects the composition of the population as well as population size.
International travel and migration statistics are based on electronic arrival and departure records for each international passenger, supplied to Stats NZ by the New Zealand Customs Service. These electronic records include flight and passport details, such as date of travel, date of birth, sex, and country of citizenship.