Regional spend estimates

Estimated visitor spend by region, industry, and where visitors come from, updated monthly. From the Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates (MRTE).

Source: MBIE Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates (MRTE) Updated monthly About the data

Key facts: visitor spend in New Zealand

Visitors spent an estimated $19.0B in New Zealand in the 12 months to August 2026 (MBIE MRTE).
International visitors accounted for $7.2B (38.1%) and domestic visitors $11.8B (MBIE MRTE).

About Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates

Published by: Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), developed by Marketview
Updated: Monthly

The MRTEs are MBIE’s modelled estimates of total visitor spending, developed by Marketview. They use anonymised electronic card transactions to understand spending patterns, then scale them to official totals from the Tourism Satellite Account, so they include an estimate of non-card spending.

This page shows the latest rolling 12-month spend, the trend over time, rankings by destination, and where spending comes from. Region and RTO views are monthly; district views are annual. Recent months are revised as new official benchmarks are published.

Official MRTE release (opens in new tab)MRTE methodology on the publisher’s website (opens in new tab)

Overview

Monthly tourism spend over the latest 24 periods, plus rolling 12-month totals.

Total Spend (12m)

$19.0B

International (12m)

$7.2B

NZ Domestic (12m)

$11.8B

Time Series

Spend trend over time, by product category, or as a seasonal chart (monthly pattern with one line per year).

Regions

Ranking by destination for the latest rolling period.

Region level

Origins

Origin market spend for the selected destination · latest rolling period.