A record 98,000 Kiwis go cruising

Monday, 23 July 2018

One in three Kiwi cruise passengers opted for a South Pacific destination last year. The average cruise passenger was aged 52 and cruised for just under 10 days.

More Kiwis than ever are taking holidays on the high seas, with a record 98,000 going cruising last year.

But they're not going far with two thirds of passengers sailing close to home on trips around New Zealand, the South Pacific and Australia.

According to figures released by the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) the biggest growth was in voyages around Australia with Kiwi passengers more than doubling to 13,264.

There as a slight drop in numbers jetting offshore for cruises in Europe and the Mediterranean, which remained the most popular destinations outside the Pacific, and just 1000 Kiwis went on world voyages.

The number of Kiwis heading to Europe and the mediterranean for cruises fell sightly last year to just over 11,000

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About a quarter of New Zealand cruise passengers stick to home waters and visit destinations such as Stewart Island.

The equivalent of about 2 per cent of the New Zealand population took a cruise in 2017, but that's still well below out the 8 per cent of Aussies who opted for a ship board holiday.

Chief executive of Cruise New Zealand Kevin O'Sullivan said mid winter cruises were increasingly popular and although 60 per cent of New Zealand cruise passengers were aged over 50, the demographics were changing.

'There's a lot more families with children going cruising.'

Cruising was also a convenient way for New Zealanders to visit local destinations such as Stewart Island and Fiordland.

'One cruise ship that called into Stewart Island, we found that 80 per cent of people on board were New Zealanders.'

Cruises were commonly between eight and 14 days, but there had been a big jump in trips of less than four days, and O'Sullivan said short music or comedy festival cruises were popular.

CLIA's Australasian managing director Joel Katz said 109 new cruise ships were due to be built by 2027 and New Zealand was in a good position to benefit from that if it addressed a lack of cruise infrastructure.

Improved cruise facilities are in the offing for Christchurch with work on a new cruise berth underway in Lyttelton.

Changes planned for the Ports of Auckland will allow large cruise vessels to tie up at Queen's Wharf instead of having to tender thousands of passengers ashore, but O'Sullivan said the development still had to go through the resource consent process.

Statistics NZ put the value of the cruise sector at more than $300m annually.

Spending by the 220,000 passengers accounted for about half of that and cruise lines spent $117m on provisioning and refuelling their vessels here.