Fine dining, hard times: why New Zealand is paying for Michelin

Saturday, 8 November 2025

Luke Malpass is politics, business and economics editor.

OPINION: Question: What is a Michelin Star worth to the New Zealand economy?

Answer: $2.5 million in tourist levy and bit of taxpayers’ money for the first year, for a starter.

But the real answer is much more than that.

The fine dining ratings system - which evolved out of the French tyre-making Michelin brothers’ quest to get people travelling more in order to sell more tyres - is now being paid to come to New Zealand.

It is one of two bits of corporate welfare (cough, government investment, cough) announced by the Government this week. The other is making New Zealand’s film subsidies more generous.

In both cases the subsidies are basically a pay-for-play scenario.

The film subsidies are being changed to make them globally competitive. Big film studios have no shortage of places to choose from, and softer tax breaks are standard practice. In the US, states vie for films; Australia has a scheme; everyone has one. A few months ago Nicola Willis essentially said this is the price of having a film industry. And it is.

In the case of the Michelin stars and guide, it is exclusively pay-for-play. In order for the company to run its services in a given country, that country has to pay. It is a well-oiled global rent on taxpayers everywhere for governments prepared to stump up.

Tourism New Zealand has put in the money for the first year and says arrangements beyond that are commercially sensitive. Michelin takes the money and gets on with assessing restaurants. There is no government input and the organisation says Michelin stars are standard across the world.

As far as stars go, if New Zealand has restaurants that are good enough, terrific. If not, no dice. The taxpayer dollars are no guarantee of anything.

However, it would be surprising if there were not at least one restaurant here that made the grade. There will be an annual guide to New Zealand restaurants. Michelin testers are, apparently, already on the ground.

The inaugural New Zealand edition of the Michelin Guide will be revealed in mid-2026, covering four key destinations: Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown, the Government said in a statement.

Interestingly, since the announcement on Thursday there have been stories in the Australian press — including two in The Australian Financial Review— asking how it is that Australia has not managed to get Michelin on its shores.

The answer, inverse to New Zealand’s case, is that Tourism Australia appears not to have been prepared to pay or organise the federal and state governments to pay to get Michelin there. The reported total was about $40 million. This has been widely pilloried by the Australian restaurant sector, and the minister in charge — an old Labor factional boss named Don Farrell — has come under heat.

The total grant the New Zealand Government is tipping in at this point is $6.3m, funded mostly by the International Visitor Levy - a tourist tax which everyone except New Zealand and Australian citizens and NZ residents have to pay - which this Government increased from $35 to $100 last year. The government has also topped it up from elsewhere.

The idea has clearly generated a bit of buzz. For a minimal amount of money from the public purse, New Zealand may become plugged into a global high-end network of restaurants for people to visit. It also plays well with that bit of the New Zealand psyche constantly stretching to prove that, despite our size and location at the bottom of the world, we can compete with the best.

When the guide comes out in the middle of next year, it will be well-timed for the election, a big party, and will appeal to the Camino-trail-hiking demographic it is aimed at. If there is a Michelin star restaurant in one of the four centres being assessed, that could become another reason for Australians in the eastern seaboard capitals to visit New Zealand.

Sometimes in politics there are events or little things which don’t affect most people but make the place feel a little bit better. New Zealand is not going to have a fine dining-led recovery, but little things like this can help in unprovable ways. Or, if things are going very badly for the Government by the middle of next year, it can just reinforce out-of-touch vibes.

The tourism sector is one area the Government continues to look to for a bit of pre-election juice. And the news on arrivals has been mostly good. Monthly arrivals in June were about 93% of what they were in 2019, and annual arrivals in the year to June were about 85% of that level.

However, 2019 is now six years ago. Getting the numbers back to where they were is one thing, but those same numbers are arriving into an economy with a much higher cost base.

The Government has tried to get international tourism to deliver a bit more to the coffers via the tax hike on visitors, but so far has resisted the sort of bed tax that is common around the world and, in most polls, has overwhelming public support.

Despite the Government’s no-new-taxes promise, under pressure from the opposition as well as mayors around the country, it seems like a bed tax will be on the agenda at some point in the next few years.

And there is a broader question of strategy. Basically everything has been aimed at getting tourism demand back up to generate more economic activity to drag the economy out of its torpor.

However, as the recent Shaping Queenstown: 2025 Tourism and Infrastructure Summit hosted by The Post and Infrastructure New Zealand showed, it is the infrastructure side of the tourism sector that needs more thinking.

Buried underneath the overall tourist statistics, places such as Queenstown are booming more than ever before.

During the Covid-19 pandemic the previous government had all sorts of plans about how it was going to reimagine tourism and push it up the value chain - a favoured trope among those who dismiss New Zealand’s tourism sector as the industrial-scale pouring of flat whites by foreign students on gap years.

That, of course, came to nothing, as the government was desperate to get the economy moving and realised that the nature of tourism - which is based on tourist preferences - is not easily changed by any government.

Nevertheless, it’s worth remembering that in the lead-up to the 2017 election, tourism was a pretty big electoral issue, which encompassed freedom camping gripes and much besides. Failure to put thought into the supply-side infrastructure of key tourism spots now (because it will take years to build) would be imprudent. It will become an issue again.

But those are tomorrow’s problems. For today, the Government’s biggest problem is that despite the bright spots — which there always are — the economy doesn’t seem to be picking up.

Within the National Party there is a feeling that things are actually better than people think, but that such a negative grip has taken hold of the place that it’ll take quite a lot to shift it.

This week demonstrated some pragmatic and not-too-expensive steps to try to do exactly that. The problem is that this Government, just like the last one, is dealing with inflation. It is like water on a pavement - it reaches every crack and soaks into every crevice.

While the acute period of high inflation might be over, it will take a few years of price stability for people to accept current prices as the new normal. Cost of living is back to the top concern among voters in basically every poll.

The Michelin announcement should be a boon to New Zealand’s restaurant players, hopefully being the first step to a reinvigorated sector. Like the America’s Cup - also the beneficiary of taxpayer dollars in the past - it will be quite exciting when it all happens.

But it won’t help with the number one issue occupying voters.

*CLARIFICATION: An earlier iteration of this column said the government was spending $2.5 million in taxpayers money on Michelin. It is paid for by the International Visitor Levy and taxpayer money. (Amended Saturday November 6, 7.07am)