International Travel 15 August

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

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

Annual arrivals

Overseas visitor arrivals were 3.38 million in the June 2025 year, an increase of 162,000 from the June 2024 year. The biggest changes were in arrivals from:

• Australia (up 141,000 to 1.44 million)
• United Kingdom (up 19,000 to 189,000)
• China (up 17,000 to 248,000)
• Japan (up 10,000 to 72,000).

New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals were 3.05 million in the June 2025 year, an increase of 128,000 from the June 2024 year. The biggest changes were in arrivals from:

• Australia (up 68,000 to 1.24 million)
• Indonesia (up 29,000 to 94,000)
• China (up 26,000 to 162,000)
• Japan (up 19,000 to 86,000)
• India (up 17,000 to 112,000)
• New Caledonia (down 11,000 to 1,000).

Monthly arrivals - overseas visitors

Overseas visitor arrivals were 186,800 in June 2025, an increase of 1,500 from June 2024. The biggest changes were in arrivals from:

• Singapore (up 1,000)
• Australia (up 800)
• New Caledonia (up 600)
• China (down 2,100).

The total number of overseas visitor arrivals in June 2025 was 87 percent of the 213,500 in June 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic).

Of the 186,800 overseas visitor arrivals in June 2025:

• 52 percent were from Australia (compared with 48 percent in June 2019)
• 9 percent were from United States (10 percent in June 2019)
• 6 percent were from China (9 percent in June 2019)
• 3 percent were from India (2 percent in June 2019)
• 3 percent were from Singapore (2 percent in June 2019).

Monthly arrivals - New Zealand-resident travellers

New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals were 250,100 in June 2025, an increase of 15,100 from June 2024. The biggest changes were in arrivals from:

• Australia (up 7,400)
• China (up 2,700)
• Japan (up 1,300)
• Philippines (up 1,100)
• Indonesia (up 1,000).

The total number of New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals in June 2025 was 97 percent of the 257,300 in June 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic).

Of the 250,100 New Zealand-resident traveller arrivals in June 2025:

• 40 percent were from Australia (compared with 41 percent in June 2019)
• 8 percent were from Fiji (9 percent in June 2019)
• 5 percent were from United States (7 percent in June 2019)
• 5 percent were from China (4 percent in June 2019)
• 5 percent were from United Kingdom (5 percent in June 2019).

Border crossings

There were 932,300 border crossings in June 2025, made up of 446,000 arrivals and 486,300 departures. In June 2024 there were 881,700 border crossings.

June 2025 border crossings were 95 percent of the 982,200 in June 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 June 2025, just under 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: July 2025 will be released on 10 September 2025.