18 Feb 2018

Top UK statistician reviews MBIE methodology

4:52 pm on 18 February 2018

One of Britain's top statisticians is overseeing a review of how New Zealand collects tourism data.

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Photo: RNZ / Nita Blake-Persen

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) collects spending and other data through the International Visitor Survey.

It's one of the main ways the government collects tourists' spending and other data and plays a vital role in how regions are funded.

A high-level review of MBIE's methodology is underway now, because regional tourism agencies complained about the fluctuations in, and accuracy of, its figures.

The review was announced by Statistics New Zealand last year and will be conducted by Ian Cope from the Office for National Statistics in the United Kingdom.

Mr Cope is due to meet with regional tourism leaders as part of his review this week.

One of the people he will meet is Charlie Ives, executive officer of Regional Tourism New Zealand, the national association that represents the 30 tourist organisations around the country.

"I think you can say right across the spectrum of RTOs [regional tourism organisations] there's a degree of concern about accuracy," he said.

Until four years ago data was collected at the airport, with interviews of departing visitors on how much they had spent and what they'd spent it on, but that had since changed because they were not capturing the full spectrum of travellers, he said.

"For example business travellers would go directly to the airport lounge and wouldn't be captured in the survey, also, the interview was quite long.

"So they changed the methodology a couple of years ago to gain data once people had returned home, to an online survey.

"The accuracy of that has been questioned, because of the size of the sample that comes back and also because of people's recall. Can people remember accurately what they spent two weeks ago in Queenstown and what they spent it on?

"That's been on the minds of the industry for some time.''

Mr Ives said if the figures were jumping around - it was a problem.

"Because RTOs [regional tourism organisations] are funded primarily by local government, quite rightly the local authority, on behalf of ratepayers, wants a full accounting and transparency on what has been spent.

"If the data keeps changing, the leaders of the RTOs have to go back to their stakeholders and say 'sorry, we got it wrong' and that puts doubt in the minds of funders.''

Mr Ives said his expectation was that the review would reveal that the methodology was not giving a true figure of what the spend was and there might be recommendations to change that.

"I'm hopeful there will be some concrete recommendations that will provide some greater confidence in the data, and iron out the wrinkles.''

National Party Tourism spokesperson Jacqui Dean agreed there were concerns with the accuracy of the data.

"RTOs like Venture Southland rely on the data so they can plan for future investment in tourism, trends and where the growth is occurring.

"MBIE had clearly been failing in doing that adequately for them.''

She said the sample size was too small.

"You're not going to get a fair reflection of what the tourism spend is.

"It is their job to provide good data for the tourism sector and it's so critical now. We no longer have a high season and a low season, we have a high season and a higher season with tourism being so strong.''

A spokesperson for Statistics New Zealand said the review was expected to be completed in June.

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