New Zealand came within a whisker of its pre-Covid August visitor numbers, but Auckland took a smaller slice of the arrivals than it did a year ago. Stats NZ’s International travel release for August 2026, published on 14 October, counted 248,714 overseas visitor arrivals in the month. That was up 18,422, or 8.0 per cent, on August 2025 and 99 per cent of the 251,100 recorded in August 2019.
The port-of-arrival figures in Stats NZ’s detailed visitor tables show where the growth landed. Arrivals through Auckland Airport rose 3.4 per cent to 144,974, a gain of 4,762. Queenstown Airport rose 19.2 per cent to 58,863, a gain of 9,462, so the southern airport added almost twice as many overseas visitors as the country’s main gateway. Christchurch Airport rose 15.7 per cent to 30,975 and Wellington Airport fell 3.8 per cent to 10,662. Auckland handled 58.3 per cent of August arrivals, down from 60.9 per cent in August 2025 and 62.1 per cent in August 2024, continuing the slide reported here for July.
Australia is the clearest example of the shift. The 125,573 Australian arrivals were a record for an August month, up 4.9 per cent. But Australian arrivals through Auckland Airport slipped 0.8 per cent to 51,322, while Australian arrivals through Queenstown rose 14.7 per cent to 48,102, leaving the ski-season gateway within 3,220 visitors of Auckland. China delivered the biggest increase of any country, up 6,483, or 31.6 per cent, to 27,008. Chinese arrivals through Auckland Airport rose 10.9 per cent to 20,468, but the rest of the growth went south. Chinese arrivals through Christchurch rose from 1,312 to 3,421 and through Queenstown from 658 to 2,728, and the number whose last port before New Zealand was Sydney rose from 1,255 to 4,753. Auckland’s share of Chinese arrivals fell from 90 per cent in August 2025 to 76 per cent.
Holidaymakers drove the month. Holiday arrivals from all countries rose 15.2 per cent to 133,157, while arrivals to visit friends and relatives fell 3.3 per cent to 62,714. Conference and convention arrivals rose 28.1 per cent to 8,212. For the year to August 2026, New Zealand recorded 3,713,089 visitor arrivals, up 9.0 per cent, but still about 186,000 short of the year to August 2019.
Auckland Airport’s own September figures, issued to the NZX on 15 October, suggest the pattern carried into spring. Total international passenger movements of 827,668 were in line with September 2025, with seat capacity flat and an average load factor of 83 per cent. Excluding transit passengers, international passengers fell 2 per cent to 757,356, while transit movements rose 17 per cent to 70,312. Among the top five nationalities, Chinese nationals were up 12 per cent and US nationals up 9 per cent, while New Zealand nationals fell 6 per cent. Domestic passengers fell 7 per cent to 667,048 on a 7 per cent cut in seats, which the airport put down to continued capacity reductions and school holidays that started a week later this year. Queenstown Airport’s international movements rose 19 per cent to 108,935.
The airport is counting on China to lift the summer. RNZ reported on 16 October that Auckland Airport expects airlines to offer 614,000 seats between mainland China and Auckland from November to March, up 9 per cent on last summer, with 48,000 additional seats and up to 65 return flights a week at the peak. China Southern will lift its Guangzhou service by 23 per cent to as many as 18 flights a week in December and January, Air China will add 46 per cent more capacity from Beijing over Chinese New Year, China Eastern will run up to 11 Shanghai flights a week, and Air New Zealand will add 7,000 seats on its own Shanghai route in February. Across all international routes the airport expects nearly six million seats this summer, up 5 per cent.
Scott Tasker, Auckland Airport’s chief customer officer, linked the extra flights to simpler visa rules. Since November 2025 Chinese visitors holding a valid Australian visa have been able to enter New Zealand without a separate visa, and RNZ reported that around 65,000 Chinese travellers entered via Australia in the first half of 2026, up 156 per cent. “Making travel simpler matters,” Tasker said. “Combined with strong tourism demand and airlines investing in more services, it creates a real opportunity to keep growing travel between China and New Zealand.” He said Chinese visitor numbers remained about 20 per cent below the levels forecast for the last summer before the pandemic.
Tourism New Zealand chief executive Rene de Monchy told RNZ that spending by Chinese visitors had risen 26 per cent to $1.5 billion in the year to June 2026 even though numbers were still below 2019. “Those visitors were often part of larger touring groups, and that segment has reduced as travel habits have changed,” he said. “What we’re now seeing is more free and independent travel coming to New Zealand or smaller group travel.” He expected the gap to close quickly. “We should have a very strong summer coming out of China,” he said.
For Auckland’s hotels the two releases cut both ways. Demand is already strong, with MBIE’s accommodation figures showing Auckland guest nights up 12.7 per cent in August to 634,400 and the region’s hotels filling 68.3 per cent of their rooms. Arrivals through the city’s airport are still growing, just more slowly than the national total, and the summer schedule puts the airport’s biggest bet on the market whose arrivals are rising fastest. The catch is that Chinese and Australian travellers are increasingly landing in Christchurch and Queenstown first. MBIE’s September accommodation figures, covering the school holidays, are due in late October.
This article was contributed by Auckland Hotels, a comprehensive guide to accommodation in Auckland, New Zealand.
Is Auckland losing visitors to the South Island, or is there room for both to grow this summer? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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