New North Island tourism alliance announced
Monday, 5 May 2025
A new tourism alliance will bring together 15 of the North Island's biggest tourism organisations in a bid to increase international visitor numbers to the north of the country.
New Zealand’s tourism industry is on the road to recovery from the Covid era, but international visitors have still not reached pre-Covid levels.
Total international visitor arrivals into Auckland are now at 84% of 2019 levels, after an 11% increase over the year to December 2024, according to Auckland Airport.
That has led some of the North Island’s biggest tourism organisations to form a partnership to better promote the region’s array of destinations and experiences to overseas markets, including Australia, the US and China.
The partnership, which is the first of its kind for regional tourism organisations in the north was announced, and a memorandum of understanding signed, at the Auckland Airport Tourism Forum in Rotorua on Monday.
It is made up of organisations representing regions from the Far North down to Wellington. They include Tātaki Auckland Unlimited, Hamilton & Waikato Tourism, RotoruaNZ, Venture Taranaki, Hawke’s Bay Tourism, and WellingtonNZ.
Auckland Airport chief executive Carrie Hurihanganui said the new partnership was about leveraging the organisations’ collective tourism pulling power.
“Individually, each region has a fabulous offering, but we’re wanting to work together to help international visitors to better connect those dots to experience everything that is wonderful and unique about the North Island.”
A record 379,000 US travellers came through the airport in the year to February, and Australia and China inbound numbers were back in growth mode, but New Zealand’s tourism is still a little behind compared with the rest of the world, she said.
“We’re confident it will catch up but it's going to take some collaborative effort from the industry, like what we’ve announced today, to get there.
“While there’s a lot of uncertainty in markets overseas, particularly the United States, there are still plenty of opportunities.”
Hurihanganui said the reality was that it was a highly competitive market for airline seat capacity and as a long-haul destination, New Zealand’s tourism sector had to work together to drive traveller demand.
“Auckland Airport teams are working hard to show our airline partners the value in connecting to New Zealand, doing our bit to grow our country’s economic ambitions through tourism.”
The partnership built on work the airport had done with Tātaki Auckland Unlimited and RotoruaNZ over the past year to attract back more Australian visitors with a dual region North Island destination proposition, she added.
“We’re starting to see that effort flow through to an increase in Australian visitation, which [is] building back from 83% of pre-pandemic volumes last February to 92% recovered one year on. That’s an additional 110,000 Australian tourists.”
In 2019, Australian visitors made up 40% of all visitor arrivals to New Zealand, and that had increased to 42% by December, she said.
Tātaki Auckland Unlimited’s destination director Annie Dundas said the new alliance was a big step forward in helping the North Island strengthen its international presence.
“The travel landscape is changing, and we need to be smarter about how we show up overseas to sell our respective regions.
“This partnership allows us to be clearer in our proposition, which in turn will make it easier to meet the needs of our travel partners overseas and ultimately future travellers.”
RotoruaNZ chief executive Andrew Wilson said working together allowed them to move beyond competition and into collaboration to showcase the breadth of North Island experiences available, from coastlines to culture, from wellness to adventure.
“This will not only help international visitors see more of what’s on offer, it will encourage longer stays, more meaningful travel, and deeper connections with our people and places.”