April Easter boosts guest nights

April Easter boosts guest nights – Media release

12 June 2017

Easter boosted guest nights in April 2017, up 6.9 percent on the quiet April 2016 when the Easter holiday fell in March, Stats NZ said today.

"Without Easter in March this year, we had a significant fall in guest nights when compared with March in 2016. The increase we saw in April is the expected reversal of that Easter effect," accommodation statistics manager Melissa McKenzie said.

For holiday parks, the effect of the Easter holiday was particularly noticeable. Holiday park guest nights bounced back, up 133,000 in April 2017 compared with April 2016. This followed a fall of 143,000 in March 2017 when compared with March 2016. Both international and domestic guest nights in holiday parks were up in April 2017 compared with April 2016 – 15 percent and 29 percent, respectively.

The increase in holiday park guest nights this April accounted for over half the overall increase in New Zealand guest nights. Across all accommodation types, guests spent 223,000 more nights in commercial accommodation in April 2017 than in the previous April.

In the year ended April 2017, 38.6 million guest nights were spent in commercial accommodation, 1.3 million more than in the previous April year.

The Accommodation Survey collects data for guests staying in short-term commercial hotels, motels, backpacker accommodation, and holiday parks in New Zealand each month. Private accommodation is excluded.

See also: Accommodation Survey: April 2017 for more information on monthly accommodation statistics.

Ends

For more information about these statistics:
• Visit Accommodation Survey: April 2017
• See CSV files for download
• Open the attached files
AccommodationSurveyApr17.pdf
asapr17tables.xlsx

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