Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates

31 July 2026

MBIE

June 2026 release: Methodology update, restoration of TA-level estimates, and documentation updates.

The July 2026 release incorporates improvements to the Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates (MRTEs) following stakeholder feedback. The changes have been applied across the full published series.

Key updates include

Removal of the Other Tourism, Education Services, and Air Passenger Transport industry groupings from MRTE totals.
Resumption of Territorial Authority (TA) level reporting.
Publication of expanded methodology and user guidance, including ANZSIC mappings and information on how MRTEs compare with other tourism datasets.

These changes improve the usability, stability, transparency, and interpretability of the estimates and bring the series more closely into line with user expectations and industry understanding.

Check out the MRTEs User guide for more information.

Hover over a series to find out what RTOs and councils make up an area.

The Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates (MRTEs) provide estimates of regional monthly expenditure that indicate tourism's contribution to the national and regional economies. The MRTEs estimates are based on Electronics Card Transaction (ECT) data and official tourism statistics, primarily the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA).

The MRTEs provide expenditure estimates by visitor market, location, and industry grouping. Current published totals include accommodation, food and beverage services, retail spending, cultural and recreational services, and other passenger transport. Territorial Authority (TA) level data is also available.

As part of ongoing improvements to the series, the Other Tourism, Education Services, and Air Passenger Transport categories are not included in published MRTE totals. These categories are excluded from all periods in the current series.

MRTEs were previously produced from 2016 to 2020 but were discontinued due to disruptions caused by COVID-19. They were replaced by Tourism Electronic Card Transactions (TECTs) as an interim measure before the redevelopment of the MRTE series.

More information on MRTEs can be found on MBIE's website.

The latest files can be downloaded below, along with detailed user guidance.

Download MRTE spreadsheets

User guidance for MRTEs

Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates - User guide [PDF, 5 MB]

More Interactive Visualisations from the Sustainable Tourism Explorer

Domestic tourism expenditure International tourism expenditure Proportion of spend per region Growth in spend per region Spend per industry by region Spend per region by origin

Annex: Data for removed industry groupings

Note: Other Tourism, Education Services, and Air Passenger Transport industry groupings have been removed from MRTEs as of 31 July 2026. These files containing the removed data are available to assist users in transition to the updated methodology. Interpret with caution.