2020 NZ Travel Index Shows Kiwis ‘Getting Back Out There’
Travel Index launch reveals a rapid change in direction for NZ tourism
New Zealanders love to travel and a newly released road travel index is providing fresh insights into the NZ tourism picture and its outlook.
Unveiling the TripTech Independent Road Travel Index, the trans-Tasman travel technology company and owner of the CamperMate app, has utilised its travel app suite to generate real-time, insight-rich data around local road traveller activities across North and South Islands.
TripTech’s CamperMate app is the number one New Zealand travel experience app, established here just over a decade ago and today backed by over two million users.
TripTech’s NZ Road Travel Index provides real-time insights into New Zealand tourism and visitation to help inform and inspire authorities and local travellers in a market presently not servicing Australian or international visitors.
Part owned by New Zealand’s Tourism Holdings, TripTech has long-established dealings with national and local government entities and its NZ Index will power new and emerging insights as NZ tourism re-establishes itself.
The Road Travel Index’s first release shows a sizeable drop in recorded visitation and on-road trips within NZ (33 per cent below 2019 figures to June) and overnight stays down further - by 55 per cent.
TripTech CEO Nick Baker said locally-taken road-trips and overnight stays in recent times had been rising strongly as travel restrictions lifted across the country with businesses re-opened and community, sport and social activities again kick starting.
Mr Baker said the COVID-19 pandemic had an obvious and dramatic impact on recent past internal NZ travel patterns, but local enthusiasm to ‘get back out there’ has been clearly tracked by the Index, and local travel is returning strongly.
“Our Road Travel Index provides realistic signposts around how New Zealanders’ are making a genuine ‘return to travel’. Excitingly the road trip is back!” Mr Baker said.
“TripTech’s app suite provide practical consumer travel tools for pre-booking, in-trip information gathering and allowing users to experience our great regions when on the road. But they also drive fresh analysis and insight of New Zealanders’ local leisure travel and road trips that can now inform industry and governments.”
The Index’s inaugural release provides intriguing insights of our recovering tourism and travel industry. The Independent Road Travel Index by TripTech found:
Total New Zealand visitation was down 33 per cent to June 2020 (from June 2019)
Overnight stays were down 55 per cent to June 2020 from the previous year
Recent visitor numbers are strongly up – growing 36 per cent to June 2020 and overnight stays jumping 50 per cent between May & June 2020, proving New Zealanders are getting out there
The new NZ travel market is now more actively engaging in day trips and localised activity rather than overnight stays – whilst a positive in travel terms, the loss of accommodation and tour bookings is becoming an important issue to address
New Zealand’s tourism regions have collectively seen large rises in travel visitation through June, led by Auckland, Christchurch and Bay of Plenty
New Zealand local councils experiencing large visitor arrivals have included: Tauranga City, Waikato district and the Queenstown Lakes District.
Mr Baker said Independent Road Travel Index allows touring New Zealanders, tourism officials and governments to determine how our domestic tourism industry is ‘travelling’ in the new COVID world.
“A reversion to day trips and a return to base in the new COVID world is not unique, but it is proving an early and important insight around the current direction for New Zealand tourism.
“Our Index plans to delve further around how far afield people are prepared to travel, and will they take a tour or stay overnight, as the international borders remain firmly closed and visitor patterns change, possibly for some time,” Mr Baker said.
TripTech’s CamperMate app is available to download free on IOS and Android devices and is supported by leaders in the New Zealand and Australian caravan and RV industry including Tourism Holdings, Jayco and Discovery Parks Australia.
