27 May 2022: Most MIQ hotels have been inactive from the end of March 2022 and have not taken any guests.

About

The Accommodation Data Programme (ADP) is a ‘by industry, for industry’ research programme designed to meet the needs of accommodation providers and industry representatives in New Zealand. It replaces Stats NZ’s Accommodation Survey which ceased in September 2019. The ADP is funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, managed by NZ tourism data experts Fresh Info, and supported by all of the major tourism and accommodation associations.

The ADP collects a small amount of data from accommodation providers each month, collates it, and then publishes reports that can be used to benchmark performance and monitor the industry.

The reported statistics are based on information provided by commercial accommodation providers with at least 6 (six) stay units. Data for small hosted accommodation providers (5 or fewer stay units) and holiday homes will be reported separately when we have sufficient data to do so.

Please click here if you are a short-term accommodation provider and would like to join the ADP.

Property types

• Hotels: Properties with more than 20 ensuite units and no campground license. A property belongs to this category if it does not have full cooking facilities in most guest rooms OR it has a licensed restaurant.
• Motels and apartments (over 20 units): Properties with more than 20 self-contained apartments, motel-style units or cottages at the same location that do not have a licensed restaurant or campground license.
• Motels and apartments (6-20 units): Properties offering between 6 and 20 self-contained apartments, motel-style units or cottages at the same location that do not have a licensed restaurant or campground license. This category captures the majority of motels in New Zealand.
• Backpackers: Properties with more than 20 stay units where most stay units are beds in dorm rooms or private rooms with shared facilities (excluding those with campground licences).
• Holiday parks and campgrounds: Properties with a current campground license that offer powered and/or unpowered sites. They may offer other types of accommodation such as motel units, dorms or cabins.
• Lodges and boutique accommodation: All other properties with capacity of six or more stay units. Operators in this group typically self-define using terms such as boutique hotel, country hotel, luxury lodge, boutique lodge etc.

Measures

• Number of establishments: The number of establishments offering short-term accommodation including those temporarily closed.
• Number of stay units: Daily capacity in terms of short-term accommodation units including those temporarily closed e.g. hotel rooms, motel units, dorm beds, camping sites, etc.
• Average stay units per establishment: Number of stay units divided by number of establishments.
• Monthly stay unit capacity: Number of stay units multiplied by the number of days in the month.
• Available monthly stay unit capacity: Number of stay unit nights available to be occupied by short-term guests. This excludes stay units temporarily removed from the inventory due to closures, maintenance, emergency housing etc.
• Percentage of stay unit capacity available: Available monthly stay unit capacity divided by monthly stay unit capacity.
• Stay unit nights occupied: Number of stay unit nights occupied by short-term guests.
• Capacity utilisation rate: Stay unit nights occupied divided by monthly stay unit capacity.
• Occupancy rate: Stay unit nights occupied divided by available monthly stay unit capacity.
• Total guest nights: The number of guest nights spent in short-term accommodation units e.g. two guests staying 3 nights would generate 6 guest nights.
• Domestic guest nights: The number of domestic guest nights spent in short-term accommodation units (New Zealand residents).
• International guest nights: The number of international guest nights spent in short-term accommodation units (international visitors).
• Guest arrivals: The number of guests that stayed in short-term accommodation units e.g. two guests staying 3 nights would generate 2 guest arrivals.
• Average guests per stay unit night: Guest nights divided by stay unit nights occupied.
• Average nights stayed per guest: Guest nights divided by guest arrivals.

Regions

Statistics are currently reported for areas represented by industry bodies known as Regional Tourism Organisations (RTOs). These areas generally align with local or regional council boundaries due to the way they are funded. The map below shows New Zealand’s current RTO boundaries.

Limitations

The accuracy of the ADP is dependent on the number of responses we receive to the monthly survey. Sample sizes vary by region and property type which has a corresponding impact on data quality at those levels. Robust statistical processes are used to transform the sample data into population estimates, but this does not resolve all of the sampling errors in the data. We have therefore developed a simple data quality indicator to help users assess the reliability of the data:

• Three stars: The occupancy rate has a 95% confidence interval of +/- 5 percentage points e.g. if the estimated occupancy rate is 75% then we can be confident that the true occupancy rate lies between 70% and 80%.
• Two stars: The occupancy rate has a 95% confidence interval of +/- 10 percentage points e.g. if the estimated occupancy rate is 75% then we can be confident that the true occupancy rate lies between 65% and 85%.
• One star: The occupancy rate has a 95% confidence interval of more than +/- 10 percentage points.

Caution should be exercised when comparing these results with those of Stats NZ’s Accommodation Survey due to methodological differences including (but not limited to) coverage, the way capacity is calculated, and the way accommodation types are defined. The impact of these differences on published results is difficult to quantify at this stage.

The origin of guest data is based on the best information available to tourism accommodation providers at the time of booking. There are known issues in the definition of international guests based on either usual residence or nationality.

Revision and Changes

12 Feb 2021: Statistics from July 2020 to November 2020 have been revised. We have added new responses to the sample and rectified several classification errors.

We have also improved the methods for subtracting emergency housing stay units from the data. Our latest methodology uses actual administrative data from the Ministry of Social Development, greatly improving the reliability of the ADP estimates for areas and property types where emergency housing is common.

This new methodology has been applied to revise historical data and will keep being utilised from the December 2020 release onwards.

28 Apr 2021: Statistics from June 2020 have been revised in accordance with the revisions to the statistics from July 2020 to November 2020.

26 Aug 2021: South Waikato District has been removed from all Waikato RTO statistics. Statistics from December 2020 to June 2021 have been revised. We have added late responses to the sample and rectified any inconsistencies in the data.

13 Dec 2021: We have updated the definition of Active Establishments to exclude Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) facilities. We have removed MIQ stay units and corresponding guest data from the entire time series.

10 Feb 2023: Statistics from November 2021 to November 2022 have been revised. We have added new responses to the sample and rectified several classification errors.

9 Feb 2024: Statistics from December 2022 to November 2023 have been revised. We have added new responses to the sample and rectified several classification errors.

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Privacy

You may browse and access information contained within this dashboard without providing personal information. This dashboard is hosted on a website owned by RStudio. Their privacy policy can be found here. Fresh Info’s data protection policy can be found here.