International Travel 13 October

International travel covers the number and characteristics of overseas visitors and New Zealand resident travellers (short-term movements) entering or leaving New Zealand.

Key facts

Monthly arrivals - overseas visitors
Monthly arrivals - New Zealand-resident travellers
Annual arrivals
Border crossings

Monthly arrivals - overseas visitors

Overseas visitor arrivals were 230,300 in August 2025, an increase of 16,000 from August 2024. The biggest changes were in arrivals from:

• Australia (up 8,500)
• China (up 1,700)
• Taiwan (up 1,600)
• Japan (up 1,200).

The total number of overseas visitor arrivals in August 2025 was 92 percent of the 251,100 in August 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic).

Of the 230,300 overseas visitor arrivals in August 2025:

• 53 percent were from Australia (compared with 49 percent in August 2019)
• 9 percent were from China (12 percent in August 2019)
• 5 percent were from the United States (6 percent in August 2019)
• 4 percent were from Japan (4 percent in August 2019)
• 3 percent were from the United Kingdom (3 percent in August 2019).

Monthly arrivals - New Zealand-resident travellers

New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals were 258,400 in August 2025, an increase of 2,400 from August 2024. The biggest changes were in arrivals from:

• Australia (up 9,300)
• Cook Islands (up 1,400)
• United States (down 2,800)
• Vanuatu (down 1,900)
• Fiji (down 1,400)
• France (down 1,100).

There were record arrivals, for an August month, of New Zealand-resident travellers from some destinations including the Cook Islands (12,700) and Indonesia (12,200).

The total number of New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals in August 2025 was 91 percent of the 284,500 in August 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic).

Of the 258,400 New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals in August 2025:

• 41 percent were from Australia (compared with 40 percent in August 2019)
• 9 percent were from Fiji (8 percent in August 2019)
• 5 percent were from the United Kingdom (6 percent in August 2019)
• 5 percent were from the Cook Islands (4 percent in August 2019)
• 5 percent were from Indonesia (4 percent in August 2019)
• 5 percent were from the United States (7 percent in August 2019).

Annual arrivals

Overseas visitor arrivals were 3.41 million in the August 2025 year, an increase of 177,000 from the August 2024 year. The biggest changes were in arrivals from:

• Australia (up 142,000 to 1.47 million)
• United States (up 22,000 to 380,000)
• United Kingdom (up 20,000 to 190,000)
• Japan (up 10,000 to 74,000).

New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals were 3.06 million in the August 2025 year, an increase of 99,000 from the August 2024 year. The biggest changes were in arrivals from:

• Australia (up 63,000 to 1.26 million)
• China (up 22,000 to 163,000)
• Indonesia (up 22,000 to 95,000)
• Japan (up 19,000 to 88,000)
• India (up 15,000 to 112,000).

Border crossings

There were 1.01 million border crossings in August 2025, made up of 497,300 arrivals and 516,000 departures. In August 2024 there were 974,000 border crossings.

August 2025 border crossings were 92 percent of the 1.10 million in August 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Digital arrival card

A digital arrival card (New Zealand Traveller Declaration - NZTD) became available to travellers entering New Zealand from mid-July 2023, alongside the existing paper arrival card. Christchurch and Wellington airports were the first to use the NZTD, followed by Queenstown airport in late July 2023 and Auckland airport in late August 2023.

Data from July 2023 onwards therefore includes a growing proportion of digital responses. In August 2025, just over 2 in 3 of all traveller arrivals completed the digital NZTD.

The implementation of the NZTD has no impact on the range of statistical information available to international travel and migration customers.

Early and provisional international travel data

Each week, Stats NZ releases early and provisional international travel statistics - International travel (provisional) - to facilitate analysis of New Zealand's inbound and outbound tourism sectors.

This includes:

• weekly travel data for short-term overseas visitor and New Zealand-resident arrivals
• arrivals and departures data based solely on border crossings into and out of New Zealand
• stock estimates of visitors in New Zealand and New Zealand residents travelling overseas, based on arrivals and departures.

More data

Use Infoshare to access time-series data for international travel and migration:

Subject category: Tourism
Group: International travel and migration - ITM

Definitions and metadata

International travel - DataInfo+ gives general methodology used to produce international travel and migration statistics.

International travel concepts - DataInfo+ gives definitions of terms used in this release.

Subnational short-term NZ-resident arrivals - DataInfo+ gives methodology for determining the New Zealand-location information in short-term New Zealand-resident arrival records.

Technical enquiries

Alexis Hu
[email protected]

ISSN 2624-2710

Next release

International travel: September 2025 will be released on 13 November 2025.