Dry, settled summer offers hope for battered hospo sector

Monday, 10 November 2025

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The settled, sunny summer that La Niña is forecast to bring could be just what the hospitality industry needs

After a wet spring, owner of Petone’s La Bella Italia, Antonio Cacace, is looking forward to the summer too, and to changing his menu to offer lighter dishes - an Italian speciality, he laughs, especially from his home the Amalfi Coast.

“In the summer especially, we have people coming in for a gelato, a cup of coffee, a cold drink, to share a pizza,” he said.

Though business out in Petone hasn’t been struggling as much as in Central Wellington, Cacace says it’s still three to five years before he predicts the food scene will return to its pre-Covid-19 hum.

Spending per person hasn’t recovered, and it’s still hard to maintain good and experienced staff, he said.

Closing on Sundays and Mondays helped, and he hopes the weather will help more.

“Wellingtonians in the suburbs are always so supportive, and they have to keep supporting the industry because it’s second to none,” says Cacace.

“With their help we can go back to what it used to be before Covid.”

For waterfront eateries like Baduzzi in Auckland, that means more people out and about during the day and night, all week long.

“You have to make hay while the sun shines,” laughs owner and former MasterChef NZ judge Michael Dearth.

“I have been in New Zealand 22 years and I still get surprised by how much the weather affects business.”

With temperatures in the Auckland region expected to be either average or above average until the end of January, Dearth says he hopes to see his Italian-inspired eatery packed, and is hiring students and travellers to boost his team to accommodate.

“It’s our time to shine,” he says.

Climatologist from the University of Otago, Professor Nicolas Cullen says he will be watching the sea surface temperatures closely to see what impact La Niña will have.

It’s those temperatures that will tell us if our hot summer will result in the kinds of severe weather events we saw in 2023.

But there are always winners and losers with extreme weather, Cullen says, and business is definitely a winner when the going is good.

“A warming climate won’t always cost us money - we just have to be prepared and have resilience for that variability, that’s the key,” he says.

“We can get fixated on Cyclone Gabrielle-type events which cause so much damage, but beautiful weather is good for tourism too.

Wellington Chamber of Commerce acting chef executive Amanda Wood said warm, settled summers will always be good for hospitality and retail.

“After a challenging year, many businesses are looking to summer as an opportunity to rebuild momentum with more people out in the city, dining outdoors, shopping locally, and taking part in summer activities,” she said.

“A strong trading period won’t solve everything, but it can provide a meaningful boost to cashflow and confidence as we head into 2026.”

From November to January, temperatures are predicted to be average or above average in the north and east of the North Island, and north and east of the South Island, with predictions for above average temperatures in the lower eastern parts of both the North and South.

Taken over the three months of November to January, average temperatures in the North Island range between 14.7 - 16.7 degrees, and 12.5 - 14.8 in the South Island.

One long-term project at ESNZ, mapping the temperatures from seven specific stations, shows the warmest year in Aotearoa since 1909 (when the records began) was 2022, when the year was around 13.76 degrees on average - that’s 1.02 degrees warmer than 1991-2020.

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Earth Sciences Principal Scientist Chris Brandolino says ESNZ doesn’t currently predict extremes, only the likelihoods of their predictions coming to pass.

But the heat isn’t always good: as of November 3, the New Zealand Drought Index (NZDI) map shows unusually dry conditions in Hawke’s Bay, and ESNZ predicts a hotspot could still develop in the Marlborough district.

La Niña affects different parts of the country quite differently, and it could bring rain for Hawke’s Bay when the winds turn and start to come from the east.

It typically brings rain for the north of the country too, and a drier time for the South Island’s tourist hotposts in particular, Brandolino says.

When the ESNZ summer outlook lands in late November or early December, he expects to see more certainty as to how wet and hot the summer will be, when La Niña is likely to have taken over as Aotearoa’s main climate driver from a stratospheric warming over Antarctica influencing our weather more.

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