Government names tourism advisory group

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has set up a Tourism Leadership Group to advise the Tourism and Hospitality Minister on how to put the government's tourism strategy into practice, including which actions get done first.

The announcement came on 15 October, according to trade outlet Travel And Tour World. It came a day after Minister Louise Upston said overseas arrivals for August were back to 99% of the 251,100 recorded in August 2019.

Dave Beeche, chief executive of RealNZ, will co-chair the group with Anna Clark, MBIE's deputy secretary for labour, science and enterprise. It has eight industry and community members and four government members, all appointed for two-year terms. The government members come from MBIE, the Department of Conservation, Tourism New Zealand and the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport.

The non-government members have backgrounds in aviation, accommodation, hospitality, attractions, events, regional tourism, Māori tourism and destination management. They haven't been named.

The group will meet at least twice a year, and MBIE will publish the group's main papers.

Its job is to advise on the Tourism Policy Statement, which the government released on 25 June 2026. The statement has eight objectives and backs the Tourism Growth Roadmap's goal of doubling tourism's 2023 export value by 2034. It's meant to be carried out through three-year plans.

The group comes with no new money for operators. On 25 June, the day the policy statement came out, MBIE announced a third Regional Tourism Boost round: NZ$5 million for campaigns that encourage international visitors to travel beyond the main centres and outside peak periods.

Kylie Hawker-Green, general manager of Destination Hauraki-Coromandel, says her region has felt the difference. She told the NZ Herald that August international visitors there were up 6% on the year before, and that central government had "put a lot more investment into those areas in the last 12 months."

Upston has nearly hit her own target. In 2025 she set a goal of getting international visitors back to at least 2019 levels by 2026, according to her 14 October release. In the same release she called tourism New Zealand's second-largest export earner and said one in nine New Zealanders work in it directly or indirectly.

The same Travel And Tour World report cited Stats NZ's Tourism Satellite Account, which recorded NZ$46.6 billion in total tourism spending in the year to March 2025, up 3.3% on 2024. The figure includes domestic spending.

The group only gives advice, so nothing in the announcement changes what visitors pay or what they need to enter New Zealand this summer.