Damning review of tourism spending data leads to change

Tuesday, 31 July 2018

Important visitor data has been skewed by interviewing too many Australians and not enough Chinese visitors.

The tourism industry says a damning review of official visitor spending figures questions their credibility, particularly for the Chinese market.

The Statistics NZ report followed strong industry criticism about the accuracy of the international visitor survey (IVS) spending figures produced for the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE).

Tourism Industry Aotearoa chief executive Chris Roberts said the review found significant failings with the way the IVS was done and an alarming lack of oversight by Government officials.

A key problem was that too many Australians were surveyed and not enough Chinese or Japanese visitors 'so we can have very little confidence in the numbers for those markets.'

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The report released on Tuesday said the IVS was 'generally fit for purpose' and made 10 recommendations for improvements, but Roberts said the industry was surprised at the extent of the problems uncovered.

'This data is incredibly important for the tourism industry so we know which markets to target, how much each market is spending, and which high value visitors we should go after.

'The Chinese visitor data has a confidence level of plus or minus 23 per cent - against a design target of plus or minus 10 per cent.

'For now [Stats NZ is] saying they don't need to revise any of the [historical] numbers, they want to make all the fixes and have another look at it in 12 months.'

The IVS was an important part of the Government accounts because it fed into the balance of payments and the current account, as well as driving tourism forecasts, Roberts said.

It also influenced monthly estimates of regional tourism spending, which tourism promotion organisations rely heavily on to monitor their performance and make marketing decisions.

Other shortcomings identified in the review included a failure to carry out the survey as it was designed, a 'rather slim' training manual for survey interviewers, insufficient supervision and monitoring, and a lack of interaction between the survey company, MBIE, and Stats NZ.

In 2013 the survey shifted from doing face-to-face interviews at airports to surveying about 8900 visitors online, and the tourism industry began complaining when the IVS showed visitor spending plateaued or dropped while visitor arrivals grew.

MBIE general manager of research, evaluation and analytics Eileen Basher welcomed the results of the review.

She said they were already working to resolve the issues identified and were taking expert advice on the design of the questionnaire.

Stats NZ spokesman Dean Rutherford said it was too early to say what impact changes to the IVS would have on other economic indicators, such as the balance of payments and gross domestic product.

However, there was 'no compelling evidence' that returning to face-to-face interviews would improve the quality of reliability of the survey, he said.