Over 240,000 overseas visitors still in New Zealand amid COVID-19 pandemic

An estimated 240,000-260,000 visitors from overseas are in New Zealand as of late March 2020, the statistics department Stats NZ said Wednesday. Of these, about five in six are non-New Zealand citizens while the balance are New Zealand citizens.

"We've derived this provisional estimate to assist with COVID-19 analysis and decision-making," said Population Insights Senior Manager of Stats NZ Brooke Theyers. "The estimate, using international travel data, is an indication of how many overseas visitors may depart in the coming weeks."

The estimate is based on arrivals of overseas visitors in the past 12 months who have not yet departed New Zealand. Overseas visitors are people who had been living overseas for at least the 12 months before they arrived in New Zealand, irrespective of the nationality of their passport, and plan to stay in New Zealand for less than one year.

"This is an estimate of the size of the pool of overseas visitors in New Zealand at a point in time, not the flow of people coming into or leaving the country each week or month," Theyers said. "We know the flows in and out of New Zealand have slowed significantly in recent weeks."

Over recent weeks, governments have imposed international travel restrictions in multiple countries, due to the spread of COVID-19 around the world.

On March 19, the New Zealand government took further measures to protect New Zealanders from the COVID-19 virus, effectively stopping all people from boarding a plane to New Zealand, except for returning New Zealanders.

"If and when visitors in New Zealand will return overseas will depend on the availability of flights and their purpose of travel to New Zealand," Theyers said. "While most visitors to New Zealand are tourists here for a short time, large numbers are also here for work and study over many weeks or months."

In 2019, of the 3.9 million visitor arrivals to New Zealand, 1 in 8 stayed for more than a month.

Monthly averages published by Stats NZ, currently available to January 2020, show that relatively large numbers of overseas visitors are in New Zealand in March each year.

In March 2019 there was an average of 242,000 visitors each day, and in March 2018 the average was 247,000. The peak is during the summer months of December to February.