MBIE under fire over accuracy of international visitor spending data

Wednesday, 30 August 2017

Official figures claiming that visitor spending for the year plateaued at $10.3 billion are under scrutiny.

The tourism industry says it is losing faith in the accuracy of official government figures on international visitor spending and Statistics New Zealand is investigating potential improvements.

Rumblings about Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) figures came to a head after its recent announcement that international visitor spending had remained static for the year to June, despite continued growth in visitor arrivals.

Statistics New Zealand confirmed it had launched 'initial internal analysis' to see if improvements could be made in the use of MBIE's International Visitor Survey (IVS), in part because of industry feedback.

Tourism Industry Aotearoa chief executive Chris Roberts said the accuracy of MBIE's survey had been discussed 'at high levels in the government sector' for some time because they fed into official Government statistics such as gross domestic product and the balance of payments, and also affected monthly regional tourism estimates.

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He said concerns were raised after MBIE began doing the spending survey online, emailing international travellers a questionnaire to fill out instead of interviewing them in airport departure lounges.

'Less than two years ago the survey was suggesting visitor [spending] growth of 38 per cent and we didn't believe that either.

'It currently suggests that spending by business visitors is down by 24 per cent on average. There is no logical explanation for why every business visitor is supposedly spending a quarter less than they were a year ago.'

'We do struggle to put much credence on the IVS at the moment.

Roberts said they now suspected the IVS was underestimating international visitor spending, and MBIE's claim of zero growth did not line up with data from other sources such as credit card spending.

'Other indicators suggest that visitor spend is still going up by 6 to 8 per cent.

'With a stronger New Zealand exchange rate, there is no doubt that spend growth has slowed – but not to the extent estimated by the IVS.'

Stats NZ general manager products, services and insights Rachael Milicich said they wanted to better understand how the IVS compared to other sources of information on travellers' spending.

She said the work was incomplete and Stats NZ was unable to release a draft of the internal analysis at present because it included commercially sensitive figures provided in confidence by some tourism businesses.

'Stats NZ also needs to maintain the fair, orderly and transparent release of information in relation to GDP to financial markets and international investors,' Milicich said.

In 2015 Stats NZ reviewed the MBIE-administered IVS and concluded the statistical methodology was sound, but said better communication would give customers greater confidence in the quality of the data.

MBIE's general manager of evidence, monitoring and governance Michael Bird said they took comfort from that Stats NZ review and were satisfied the IVS, based on email questionnaires filled out by 9000 visitors, was 'statistically robust'.

It was important to look at longer term trends rather than at individual figures, and he pointed out the World Bank was so impressed at the way the IVS was done, it was keen to see it used in other Pacific countries.

MBIE said the tourism domain plan, which sets out priorities for official tourism statistics, was due for review and there would be extensive consultation with the industry about any changes required.