Tourism data gap leaves operators on shaky ground

Tourism operators says they are flying blind without decent regional travel data and it is hard to encourage more investment without the figures to back them up.

Getting quality tourism data has been a bugbear of the industry for years, but businesses say it has only gotten worse.

But with more money earmarked to help boost data collection, operators hope that change is on the horizon.

Visit Ruapehu general manager Jo Kennedy said the quality of available tourism data had gone downhill in the last year.

"We are trying to say to our councils 'You need to keep funding us because this is what we deliver', but it's very, very difficult with the shortage of data that's around," she said.

"We've lost pretty much all of our data assets in the last 12 months."

The industry used to get regular updates on tourist spending, regional breakdowns and visitor movements.

But that had all wrapped up and they had been relying on accommodation figures that operators volunteer for months, Kennedy said.

"It's not solid data and the difference is we literally can't say how we're going," she said.

Even a question like 'How was summer?' no longer had a simple answer and they did not have a regional breakdown of spending and where visitors travelled.

This week, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment confirmed it was still working to restore monthly regional tourism spending figures.

Although less comprehensive, it would start publishing tourism card spend data again from the end of this month, which would be backdated to cover the months long gap.

Kennedy was worried about what further squeezes on government departments like statistics might mean for getting good data.

Gavin Oliver from EcoZip Adventures opened a new zipline business in Kaikōura late last year.

"One of the greatest challenges we had prior to opening was the lack of that data, and right now, there isn't a central repository. There isn't a place we can go to to find out about visitor spending that makes it easy for us to make decisions," Oliver said.

"As a business owner and operator, it's about long-term business planning and data is key in that."

The Tourism Data Leadership Group was set up to work out how to provide consistent and reliable insights for the industry.

It released a draft two-year strategic roadmap earlier this year, including plans for boosting investment, which was expected to be finalised soon.

Tourism and Hospitality Minister Matt Doocey told a recent conference he knew how important data was to the industry.

"When you look at some of the building blocks that we need to better invest into as a government, clearly data is a key part.

"I've heard that as I've travelled around the country. The sector needs better data."

Earlier this year, he announced $5 million from the international visitor levy would be earmarked for new data collection.

It will be mostly domestic focused, providing a range of insights from visitor movements, short-term rental accommodation market to community sentiment.

The first data set is expected later this year.

Tourism Industry Aotearoa chief executive Rebecca Ingram said data reporting had been going backwards for some time, so it was promising to see more government support.

"The tourism industry should develop in New Zealand by design, not by accident," she said.

"One of the key ingredients to ensuring that's the case is to have good information around how the industry is performing, its productivity, the visitors that we are hosting, where they're going, the regions they're going to and how much money they're spending."

Last year, the industry released its roadmap for the future of tourism to 2050 with improving data and research as one of the 10 actions it wanted to achieve.