New Zealand has reportedly overtaken Indonesia as the leading overseas destination for Australian travellers. After years of us moving there for better pay, the Australians are finally returning the favour by coming here and buying expensive dinners.
For years, the default Australian overseas holiday has been Bali. The flights are short, the weather is warm and an Australian dollar can still make someone feel briefly wealthy enough to order a second cocktail without checking their banking app.
New Zealand has now apparently pushed past it. Recent travel data reported by The Australian shows New Zealand becoming the top overseas choice for Australian travellers, with 1.57 million Australians visiting in the year to April and demand growing particularly stronge end of the market.
This is slightly surprising because New Zealand offers Australians many things they already have, including mountains, beaches, flat whites and people who become defensive when asked whether they are basically Australian. What we add is colder water, smaller cities and the opportunity to spend the same currency conversion advantage on a lodge overlooking something dramatic.
The shift is not only about proximity. Australian visitor numbers are now above their pre-pandemic level, while international tourism to New Zealand overall has recovered to around 94% of its 2019 volume. MBIE’s latest visitor survey found Australian arrivals at 105% of their pre-pa.
What seems to have changed is the kind of holiday New Zealand now sells. The old pitch was scenery, rugby and somewhere your parents might drive around in a campervan after retiring. The newer version includes expensive lodges, destination restaurants, saunas, wine tours, helicopter dinners and just enough wilderness to make a person feel adventurous before returning to a very good bed.
The arrival of Michelin has helped. New Zealand’s first guide gave the country a new piece of international shorthand for food quality, which is useful when trying to persuade Australians that crossing the Tasman can be more than visiting relatives and buying duty-free skincare on the way home. Auckland, Queenstown, Wellington and Christchurch can now sell the dinner alongside the landscape rather than treating food as the thing people eat between activities.
There is some irony in the luxury boom, because New Zealanders have spent years being told they should visit their own country only to discover the room now costs $1,200 and has been booked by someone from Sydney. Still, tourism businesses cannot survive entirely on locals waiting for a GrabOne deal, and Australian visitors remain the country’national spending.
Auckland alone received 2.4 million international visitors through its airport in the year ending March, with travellers from Australia, the United States and China contributing an estimated $2.8 billion to the regional economy. [Auckland Airport says visitors from those three markets spent around $7.6 million in the city each day](https://corporate.aucklandairport. 026/Gateway-city).
The risk is that New Zealand becomes so focused on high-value travellers that the country starts to feel like a showroom version of itself. A helicopter to dinner is impressive, but the best parts of being here are often still the dairy pie, the cold beach, the weird motel and the walk someone promised would be easy.
For now, though, it is hard to object to Australians choosing New Zealand over Bali. We have spent decades sending them our actors, musicians, builders, nurses and anyone who wanted a larger salary. It is only fair that they come back occasionally and pay full price for the tasting menu.
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