Holiday makers in Mount Maunganui and Rotorua rein in spending

Shoppers and holidaymakers are still keen to find a bargain. Photo / NZME

Holiday makers in two tourist hotspots have pulled in their purse strings as the cost of living continues to bite. Mount Maunganui and Rotorua business owners talk to Carmen Hall and Harriet Laughton about conservative spending and visitor numbers.

‘Strangest on the record’

Mount Backpackers owner Jo Veale said for the first time she had one or two empty beds which was unheard of at this time of the year.

“Usually we would be booked out weeks in advance. We haven’t got any Kiwis staying at the moment. That is a good indicator to me that the domestic tourism sector is down.”

Mount Backpackers owner Jo Veale. Photo / George Novak

Veale also owns Tea 153 and said business through the shop had been the same as last year.

“I think we’ve been lucky because I feel like the climate out there is definitely lower in retail spending.”

She said it was the locals who kept businesses alive at Mount Maunganui but the holiday vibe was in full force.

“The switch has flipped and the town and beach were jammed packed with people yesterday.”

Robertsons Menswear has been trading at Mount Maunganui for more than 40 years.

Owner Jamie Robertson said 2023 had been an “up and down year”.

“I think the cost-of-living has caught up with everybody and they just don’t have the spare cash. Summer hasn’t really kicked in either and the weather plays a big part, we go from one of the hottest days to rain.

“So it’s a combination of everything - the recipe is not quite right at the moment.”

Robertson said it “has definitely been one of the strangest on record” and he believed a lot of people would be looking forward to the New Year.

“They are looking for a fresh start.”

Fancy That owner Bill Campbell at his old shop in the Tauranga CBD. Photo / NZME

Fancy That owner Bill Campbell said shoppers had been spending “conservatively” but there were “people everywhere” at Mount Maunganui.

He moved from the Tauranga CBD in May to take advantage of the cruise ship market which had paid big dividends.

“It has exceeded my expectations. The other night the cruise ship did not leave until 8pm and we still had people coming in up until 7pm. I was not about to usher them out.”

Campbell estimated Mount Maunganui had doubled in population overnight and while people had tightened their purse strings everyone was happy and in holiday mode.

Costs of running a business still high

Restaurant owner Ray Singh. Photo / Andrew Warner

Restaurant owner of Indian Star and Urban Gusto in Rotorua, Ray Singh said Boxing Day was busy but nothing compared to pre-Covid.

His restaurants were doing better than a couple of months ago, with tourists flocking to Rotorua for the holiday period, he said.

Singh said the costs of running a business were high and while his restaurant in the food court was the busiest, it was still not enough.

A Rotorua bottle shop owner who asked not to be named said “it was very quiet” on Boxing Day despite the shopping centre being full of life.

”This time of year, we are normally very busy but this year it was just another day. Normally, a lot of money is spent on expensive bottles of liquor for Christmas gifts but this year there was none of that.”

Rotorua Thermal Holiday Park manager Andrea Scott said she had not noticed a change in the number of tourists compared to last year as the park was “always busy”.

”With our location being right near the mountain bike park, it draws in a lot of families and tourists.”

A mix of domestic markets and outside travellers stopping one or two nights on the way through were common for the holiday park, she said.

Tutanekai Gifts and Souvenirs sales assistant Aaliyah Morrell said she had noticed an increase in the amount of tourists over the Christmas period compared to last year.

Cyclezone Rotorua owner Gary Sullivan said the Christmas period was “not a big time of year for us, as people aren’t splashing out on high-end bikes for their loved ones”. Feburary and March were more favourable for sales.

Kiwis spending less on big shopping days

Data from payment provider Worldline showed Boxing Day spending around Aotearoa reached $98.3 milion down 0.6 per cent on last year but up 2.4 per cent on 2019.

New Zealand’s chief of sales, Bruce Proffit, said that although the drop in spending this Boxing Day would be disappointing for retailers, it was in line with the overall trends seen over the past six months.

The most transactions on Boxing Day came through at 12.34pm, when 6074 payments were processed through Worldline NZ’s network.

But the company’s data showed this was 44 per cent lower than the 10,805 payments processed on the last Friday before Christmas, which data showed was officially the busiest shopping day of the year for another year.

It comes after NZME reported earlier this month that food prices had climbed steadily since March 2021 as New Zealanders grappled with a cost-of-living crisis. The latest data from Stats NZ showed food prices are 6 per cent higher than they were a year ago.

Carmen Hall is a news director for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post, covering business and general news. She has been a Voyager Media Awards winner and a journalist for 25 years.

Harriet Laughton is a multimedia journalist based in the Bay of Plenty.