Travel - NZ resident arrivals by country of main destination and purpose Year ended December 2017–2024
Stats NZ
Definitions
New Zealand-resident travellers: people who live in New Zealand and are travelling overseas for less than 12 months.
Data calculation/treatment
From March 2020 to July 2022, the New Zealand government implemented measures to protect New Zealanders from the COVID-19 virus, effectively limiting travel to and from New Zealand.
For more information
Limitations of the data
Note: the 2023 data for countries with small samples is subject to high level of misclassification error and should be disregarded.
Changes to data collection/processing
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. In December 2024, just over half of all traveller arrivals completed the digital NZTD.
Before November 2018, the travel purpose of New Zealand-resident travellers was based on departure card responses and linked to the correspondent arrival card via the passport number. From November 2018, they are based on arrival card responses. This results in different patterns in purpose of travel. The two series should not be compared.
From November 2018 to December 2019, the travel purposes of 'Holiday/vacation', 'Visiting friends/relatives', and 'Conference/convention' were unavailable. From January 2020, these travel purpose categories are separately available from a redesigned arrival card and excluded from the 'Other' category.
Data provided by
Dataset name
International Travel: NZ-resident traveller arrivals by EVERY country of main destination and purpose (Annual-Dec) December 2024
Webpage:
https://infoshare.stats.govt.nz/
How to find the data
At URL provided select: Tourism > International Travel and Migration - ITM > NZ-resident traveller arrivals by EVERY country of main destination and purpose (Annual-Dec).
All variables were selected to create this dataset.
Import & extraction details
File as imported: International Travel: NZ-resident traveller arrivals by EVERY country of main destination and purpose (Annual-Dec) December 2024
From the dataset International Travel: NZ-resident traveller arrivals by EVERY country of main destination and purpose (Annual-Dec) December 2024, this data was extracted:
- Rows: 4-11
- Columns: 2-2,025
- Provided: 16,192 data points
Dataset originally released on:
February 17, 2025
About this dataset
International travel covers the number and characteristics of New Zealand resident travellers (short-term movements) entering New Zealand.
Purpose of collection
To track travel movements of New Zealand residents.
Method of collection/Data provider
Data is obtained from the responses given on arrival cards.