Travel - NZ resident arrivals by country of main destination and purpose (Monthly) 2016–2022

New Zealand-resident travellers: People who live in New Zealand and are travelling overseas for less than 12 months.
Country of 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.
Travel purpose: The main purpose of the trip overseas. Categories are holiday, visiting friends and relatives, business, conferences and conventions, education, and other.

From early 2022, some governments, including New Zealand, relaxed these restrictions, allowing more people to cross their borders. From 1 August 2022, New Zealand’s border opened to all visitors and international students.
Since January 2020, governments have imposed international travel restrictions in multiple countries, due to the spread of COVID-19 around the world. In March 2020, the New Zealand government introduced further measures to protect New Zealanders from the COVID-19 virus, effectively limiting travel to New Zealand and travel within New Zealand.

Country of main destination

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.

The travel purpose categories of New Zealand-resident travellers have been revised back to January 2020.
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.
Until a full 12 months of data are available for each new travel purpose, year ended totals for the travel purpose of 'Other' will continue to include 'Holiday/vacation', 'Visiting friends/relatives', and 'Conference/convention'.

At URL provided select: Tourism > International Travel and Migration - ITM > NZ-resident traveller arrivals by EVERY country of main destination and purpose (Monthly).
All variables were selected to create this dataset.

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

To track travel movements of New Zealand residents.

Data is obtained from electronic passport and flight records by the New Zealand Customs Service.