1. No category

Using electronic card transac on data to
measure and monitor regional tourism in
New Zealand
Rebecca Burson, Senior Analyst, MBIE
Peter Ellis, Sector Performance Team Manager, MBIE
Tourism Data Domain Plan
Comprehensive review of tourism data and insight in New Zealand
Five key topics of interest:
1. The value of tourism to New Zealand
2. The growth, innova on, produc vity and efficiency of tourism businesses in New
Zealand
3. The value of government interven ons
4. The global compe
veness of New Zealand’s tourism industry
5. The sustainability of New Zealand tourism
Par cular drive for strong regional insight.
Regional Tourism Indicators: Method
• Electronic card transac on data from Paymark (interna onal sample) and Bank
of New Zealand (domes c sample).
• Card-present spending only. No cash, internet purchases, or other methods of
payment.
• Monthly aggregated spend and transac on counts by cardholder origin,
merchant loca on, and industry classifica on (ANZSIC-06)
Regional Tourism Indicators: Method
• Extract Transform Load (ETL) processes classify data into local, domes c, and
interna onal data sets
• Domes c / local split of data based on geographic rela onship between cardholder
and merchant
• Spending within a territorial authority (TA) or across a ‘fluid’ TA boundary is considered
local. All other types of spending between TAs is considered domes c tourism.
• ETL also provides addi onal geographic and industry classifica ons (e.g.,
Regional Tourism Organisa ons, country groupings)
• Spend data are converted to indexes (100 = average month in 2008) before
analysis or publica on
Regional Tourism Indicators: Products
Domestic
• MBIE publish updates to
150
RTIs every month
insights into state of tourism
expenditure
• Products include
commentary, graphs and
tables
Index (100 = average spend in 2008)
125
• Na onal and subna onal
100
75
50
International
150
125
100
75
50
2008
2010
2012
2014
Figure 1: Domes c and interna onal indexes (dashed lines)
and 12-month rolling indexes (solid line). Source: MBIE,
Regional Tourism Indicators
Regional Tourism Indicators: Products
• Variety of products suitable
for basic and advanced
users
• Pivot tables provide detailed
insights for specific
des na ons and
markets/industry groups
Method: Regional Tourism Es mates
Leverage the RTIs to produce es mates of total spending (regardless of payment
method) using Itera ve Propor onal Fi ng (IPF)
• Uses Tourism Satellite Account (TSA, Sta s cs New Zealand) and the
Interna onal Visitor Survey (IVS, MBIE) as source of total spending by product
and country respec vely
• RTI data are ‘raked’ so that their marginal totals equal totals from IVS
(interna onal only) and TSA
Method: Regional Tourism Es mates
A basic example of IPF (‘raking’)
7
3
10
5
11
16
12
14
26
Table 1: Seed data
10
13
15
8
23
Table 2: Target totals
• Goal is to adjust seed cells so that marginal totals align with target totals
• Itera ve process involving weigh ng to row totals and column totals
Method: Regional Tourism Es mates
Method has some assump ons and limita ons:
• Excludes air passenger transport and educa on spending
• Method contols for different propensi es to use cards for different products and
by people from different countries (but not interac ons of these propensi es).
• Assumes no within-New Zealand regional differences in propensity to use cards
Detailed methods can be found here:
http://www.med.govt.nz/sectors-industries/tourism/
tourism-research-data/regional-tourism-estimates/about-the-rtes
Regional Tourism Es mates: Products
• MBIE publish updates to RTEs around November each year, a er the release of
the Tourism Satellite Account
• Products include pivot table, regional summaries, and interac ve graphs
Regional Tourism Es mates: Products
Auckland
Otago
Canterbury
Wellington
Bay of Plenty
Waikato
Northland
West Coast
Southland
Hawke's Bay
Marlborough
Manawatu-Wanganui
Tasman
Nelson
Taranaki
Gisborne
Accommodation
Food and beverage
serving services
Other passenger
transport
Other tourism
products
Retail sales - fuel
and other automotive
Retail sales - other
Domestic
International
2
1
0
1
2
Spend for year ending March 2013 ($ billion)
Figure 2: Es mates of interna onal and domes c visitor spending by Region and product. Source:
MBIE, Regional Tourism Es mates
So ware and Capabili es
• Transi oned from Microso Excel and SPSS to R for analy cal work
• Established database for centalised storage and analysis of data sets
• Developed custom programmes and func ons to automate produc on of
standard products with less human interven on
Policy and Business Applica on
• Performance indicators and lobbying tools
• Regional Economic Ac vity Report, interna onal connectedness
• Key performance indicators and evidence for tourism agencies
• Assessing market shocks
• Christchurch Earthquakes
• Rugby World Cup 2011
• Gaining market insights
• Emerging and declining markets
• Distribu on of market spending
Market Shocks: Christchurch Earthquakes
Seasonally adjusted spend index
(100 = average spend in 2008)
100
80
Local
60
Domestic
International
2010
2012
2014
Figure 3: Domes c, interna onal, and local spend in Christchurch City. Source: MBIE, Regional
Tourism Indicators
Market Shocks: Rugby World Cup
Accommodation
Cultural and recreational services
160
140
Index (100 = average spend in 2008)
200
120
150
100
100
80
Food and beverage services
Other retailing
140
140
120
120
100
100
80
2010
2011
2012
2013
2010
2011
2012
2013
Figure 4: Interna onal seasonally adjusted indexes (solid black line) and raw indexes (points) for
selected industries in Auckland Region. Source: MBIE, Regional Tourism Indicators
Market Insights
United Kingdom
United States
Average growth
(Per cent per year)
15%
10%
5%
0%
-5%
-10%
-15%
Figure 5: Growth in electronic card spending for UK and US visitors by region. Source: MBIE,
Regional Tourism Indicators
Future Direc ons
• Review of RTIs in 2015
• Methodology improvement
• Defini on of domes c tourism in RTIs
• Imputa on of non-paymark merchants for interna onal RTIs
• Product expansion
• Seasonal adjustment of RTIs
• Infla on adjustment of RTIs
Ques ons?