Whanganui Chamber of Commerce chief executive Helen Garner said she wasn’t surprised by the high increase in retail spending as many people in town chose to shop local for the festive season.
“Even for me, I made a conscious decision that I was going to buy all of my Christmas Gifts and do all of my shopping in Whanganui rather than buy online or get things sent in,” Garner said.
“As I went into shops and was talking to people, that seemed to be quite a common theme, there are a lot of people supporting local.”
People being able to do this was a sign of the diversity and strength of the local market.
“There’s a lot of really attractive and practical things that you can buy in Whanganui now,” she said.
Mainstreet Whanganui general manager Des Warahi said the high holiday spending was part of a continuing positive data trend.
“We’ve been tracking over quite a few months actually, I think it goes back about two or three months,” Warahi said.
Both spending data and visitor data were high at the same time, meaning the city has seen a lot of visitors recently, which he thought was part of the reason for the high spending.
Like Garner, he thought residents choosing to shop local for the holidays was also a factor.
“It sounds like some of the big buyers aren’t there but there are more buying smaller items but buying them local instead of going out of town or going onto websites like Amazon and the rest of it.”
In particular, the CBD had been pretty packed in the final few days before Christmas.
“I think the sense of looking after each other has been really really good,” he said.
The high prices of fuel may also have affected people’s decisions on where to shop.
“It’s cheaper to buy local instead of travelling over to Palmerston North with fuel costs being so high.”
Garner hoped people would continue to support local as it was a way to ensure the city kept its unique identity.
“There’s a phrase; buy local or bye local, she said.
“That’s a thing that we need to have in the back of our minds, that if we want to be a city known for our local artists and our artisan products and we want to encourage entrepreneurship and these new craftspeople coming through.”
Warahi said the high spending during the warmer months would be good for businesses to build up a buffer for when fewer people visit the city and business can potentially slow down in the winter.
Whanganui was also only around halfway through its events season, which would continue to bring many visitors to the city.
“Following Boxing Day you’ll have the Opera Week, you’ll have Vintage Weekend, [and] right at the end of that in March is Artist Open Studios.”
He hoped the extra events would provide a particular boost to the hospitality sector, which has been hit particularly hard over the last few years.
Finn Williams is a multimedia journalist for the Whanganui Chronicle. He joined the Chronicle in early 2022 and regularly covers stories about business, events and emergencies. He also enjoys writing opinion columns on whatever interests him.
