International Visitor Arrivals/Departures Methodology

International Visitor Arrivals (IVA) provides monthly statistics on Inbound travel by international visitors to New Zealand, including visitors by country, purpose, length of stay, age, sex, port of arrival and mode of transport (air/sea).

IVA statistics are obtained from the monthly International Travel and Migration survey undertaken by Statistics New Zealand, using international passenger arrival and departure cards collected by Customs at various international airports and seaports in New Zealand.

The same survey also provides Outbound travel statistics of New Zealand residents on short-term overseas trips for a period less than 12 months.

The International Travel and Migration survey is both a census and a sample survey. It is a census because it is compulsory for all international travelers to fill out the arrival and departure cards from which the data is derived. Some variables are processed from all the cards (e.g. age, sex, travel mode) but for some variables only a sample of the data is used for generating statistical information (e.g. purpose, length of stay, overseas port of embarkation). This depends on the traveller type/class (see details in the Sampling section below).

Variables Captured by International Visitor Arrivals/Departure cards (13KB)

The above document has the key variables currently captured by the IVA. Not all are included in regular outputs. '100%' indicates the variable is captured for every record, while 'sample' indicates that the variable is only captured for sampled records. Those sampled comprise on average approximately 27,000 per month (or 4%) of total short-tem passengers.

Sampling strata are defined by country of last permanent residence of visitors, and their sampling fractions vary from month to month to take into account the seasonal variations in the arrival numbers. There is a higher proportion of visitor arrivals sampled than short term departures.

The sampling scheme is complex, with the size of sample strata varies depending on passenger types and country of arriving visitors or main destination New Zealand resident departures, and their sampling fractions vary from month to month to take into account the seasonal variations in passenger numbers.  Generally a higher proportion of short-term arrivals is sampled than for short term departures. Samples data are subject to sample errors. These are discussed in the Data Reliability section.

The process of data collection takes place continuously throughout the year at New Zealand’s international airports and seaports. International travellers fill out arrival and departure cards, which are collected by the New Zealand Customs Service as part of the border administration documentation. These cards are then forwarded to Statistics New Zealand (SNZ) for image scanning and data processing. Customs also provide SNZ with electronic files containing vital data on passenger passport number, country of citizenship, date of birth data, sex and flight/ship number.

As completion of the arrival and departure cards is compulsory the survey has a 100% response rate.

The data collection is undertaken by New Zealand Customs. Statistics New Zealand is responsible for data processing and first release of statistics. The Ministry of Tourism is a key sponsor of data processing along with several government agencies. Both Statistics New Zealand and the Tourism Strategy Groupdisseminate comprehensive survey results on their respective websites.  See Statistics NZ and Tourism Strategy Group.