Annual sales for the year ended March 2024 reached $15.7bn, reflecting national sales growth of 5.8% over the previous year. Notably over this period, menu pricing grew by 6.4%, operational costs increased significantly in key areas and inflation overall was 4%, indicating sales growth lags behind cost increases

The restaurant and cafe sector recorded sales growth of 4.6% in 2024, reaching $7.8bn in annual sales (and posting sales $344m more than 2023)

In spite of the challenges in 2023 in the aftermath of the country’s devastating weather events, in 2024 (year end March), the Gisborne region recorded the largest percentage sales growth over the previous year. Annual sales for the region are $127.4m

145,000 employees work in the hospitality industry. Employee growth across the industry was 7.3% from 2022 to 2023. This is a growth rate that far exceeds the growth in outlets over the same period

For the year ended February 2023, there were 19,518 hospitality outlets around New Zealand. This reflects an overall increase of just 27 outlets over the previous year

Tourism was New Zealand’s second largest export earner

Total tourism expenditure was $44.4bn, the highest it has ever been, and is an increase of 14.6% ($6.7bn) from the previous year

International tourism expenditure increased 59.9% ($6.3bn) to $16.9bn. This is a recovery of 98% compared to 2019 ($17.2bn)

GST generated from international tourists totalled $1.7bn, an increase of $689m

Overseas visitor arrivals to New Zealand increased 45% to 3.2 million

Tourism generated a direct contribution to GDP of $17bn, or 4.4% of GDP, an increase of 16% or $2.3bn to the New Zealand economy

182,727 New Zealanders were directly employed in the tourism sector, an increase of 21,729 people from the previous year

In total, 303,420 people were directly or indirectly employed in tourism, or one in nine New Zealanders