1. Measuring the Backpacker Sector – Definition and Trends
Bruce Bassett
Tourism Strategy Group
Ministry of Economic Development
Presentation to the 2010 Backpacker Conference
3 September 2010

2. Importance of ‘knowing’ your sector
My key take-outs are:
There is a reasonable amount of data on the backpacker sector
There are definitions and compatibility issues to be aware of
There are important information gaps
Finally, I will issue the challenge that the sector itself should be organising to generate the information it really needs

3. Data sources International Visitor Arrivals - IVA
Other relevant data
-Business demography
-Electronic card transaction data
Data sources
International Visitor Arrivals - IVA
International Visitor Survey - IVS
Tourism Satellite Account (TSA)
Domestic Travel Survey - DTS
Forecasts
Accommodation Survey - CAM
Excludes hosted accommodation, serviced apartments, the small/micro businesses that fall below the GST/turnover threshold
Regional Visitor Monitor - RVM
- Backpacker data

4. Data sources Commercial Accommodation Monitor (CAM)
Census of commercial accommodation businesses - GST registered with turnover over $30,000
Conducted by Statistics New Zealand
‘Supply side’ survey. Self-completed
Hotels, motels, backpackers, holiday parks
Monthly, quarterly and annual data
Long time series
KPI-quality data for guest nights, occupancy, capacity, establishments, seasonality, regional activity
Proxy measure for whole sector, esp. at regional levels
Latest data to June 2010
Strongest data for backpacker sector analysis
Excludes hosted accommodation, serviced apartments, the small/micro businesses that fall below the GST/turnover threshold

5. Data sources International Visitor Survey (IVS)
Survey of 5000international visitors aged 15+
At Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch airports
‘Measures expenditure and travel patterns
Tourist’ = staying in New Zealand for less than a year
Backpacker =
An international traveller who spends at least 30% of their nights in New Zealand staying in backpacker/hostel type accommodation
Data okay for characteristic analysis, but limited by definition used and sample size

6. Data sources Domestic Travel Survey (DTS)
Survey of New Zealand households
Telephone sample of 15,000 households
Measures expenditure and travel patterns of domestic travellers
Measures overnight, day-trip and non-travellers
Backpacker =
A domestic traveller who stayed in a backpacker at least once during the trip
Limited backpacker-relevant data

7. Data sources Regional Visitor Monitor (RVM)
Survey of visitors in in six tourism regions (aged 15+)
International & domestic tourists
Measures motivations, expectations, booking, satisfaction and environmental ratings
Backpacker =
A traveller whose main accommodation in the region was in a backpackers
Unique characteristic information on booking and motivation in regions

8. What indicators are covered?
Number of businesses
Capacity
Guest nights
Occupancy
Share of total accommodation
Business size
Employment
Seasonality
Regional differences
Origin, purpose, age, travel style, spend, booking, satisfaction
Environmental performance
Here are some results…

9. Number of businesses - CAM

10. Daily capacity - CAM

11. Share of all capacity - CAM

12. Business size by capacity - CAM

13. Business size by employees - SNZ

14. Employment by accommodation type - SNZ

15. Monthly guest nights - CAM
Data compares past three years (available on Pivot Tables)
Backpacker guest nights down slightly on previous years, but Nov & Dec 09, and Jan10 showed improvements

16. Guest nights and growth - CAM
Demand has grown steadily since 2000, with fastest growth of between 7-13% p.a. Growth slowed, but then declines in 2009 during the recession. Now in a slow recovery patter, with annual growth resuming since Nov 09, but growth still below 2%.
How does recovery compare to other accommodation types?
All accommodation types - annual growth resumed from Feb10, and since then growth has reached 2%
Hotels - growth started Jan10 (+0.2%) but since jumped to 4.7%. Heavy discounting - taking some of the motel market?
Motels - faring much worse - growth only began in Mar10 (0.4%) but has dropped to -0.3% in May. Back up to 0.2% in June, but very tentative
Holiday parks - small growth started in Feb, and now at about 1%

17. Backpacker capacity - CAM
Demand has grown steadily since 2000, with fastest growth of between 7-13% p.a. Growth slowed, but then declines in 2009 during the recession. Now in a slow recovery patter, with annual growth resuming since Nov 09, but growth still below 2%.
How does recovery compare to other accommodation types?
All accommodation types - annual growth resumed from Feb10, and since then growth has reached 2%
Hotels - growth started Jan10 (+0.2%) but since jumped to 4.7%. Heavy discounting - taking some of the motel market?
Motels - faring much worse - growth only began in Mar10 (0.4%) but has dropped to -0.3% in May. Back up to 0.2% in June, but very tentative
Holiday parks - small growth started in Feb, and now at about 1%

18. Backpacker Occupancy Rates - CAM
Occupancy has fallen over the long-term as capacity has grown and demand/guest nights have remained much the same.

19. Guest nights by accommodation type - CAM

20. Origin of guest - CAM

21. Total spend by Backpackers - IVS
Total spend (excluding international airfares) of those international visitors who spent at least 30% of their nights in backpacker accommodation.
YE Jun 10:
Total spend - $518,921,635
9% of total international visitor spend
-10.3% on the previous year (but this figure is subject to sample error of approx +/- 15%)

22. Backpacker vs other international - IVS

23. Average spend per person - IVS

24. Average nights in New Zealand - IVS

25. Average spend per night - IVS

26. Origin of Backpackers - IVS

27. Age of Backpackers - IVS

28. Visitors employed in NZ - IVS

29. Purpose of visit - IVS

30. Travel style - IVS

31. Other accommodation used - IVS

32. Activities undertaken - IVS

33. Satisfaction - IVS

34. Recommend New Zealand - IVS

35. Domestic Backpackers purpose of trip
Domestic backpacker spend
$164 million

36. Domestic Backpackers age - DTS

37. Why visit a region - RVM

38. Expectations of regions - RVM

39. How backpackers found out about regions - RVM

40. Information sought pre-arrival - RVM

41. Sources of Information - RVM

42. Websites used for pre-booking - RVM
3 quarters of data – still building this information up, so watch this space!

43. Satisfaction by accommodation type - RVM

44. Environmental ratings - RVM

45. Backpacker sector outlook
No accommodation sector forecasts
International arrivals
3.5% - Average annual growth rate to 2016
3.1 million international arrivals in 2016
Domestic tourism
Stable levels over the forecast period

46. Tourism Confidence Index - TIM

47. So, what is missing? Quite a lot of descriptive data, but…
Real lack of business-oriented intelligence:
Financial data of sector
Performance of businesses
Benchmarking data across businesses

48. Difficult to use what we have now
What we have now is actually hard to use due to:
definitions
sample size limitations
where data is held

49. Looking forward
Need for the sector itself to take change of its information needs
On one hand…
MED likely to do less sector-specific analysis than in the recent past
Data sources such as CAM will be reviewed to assess merits of the data vs respondent load
On the other…
Opportunity to organise your sector to deliver quality information – sector-wide and for business benchmarking

50. To conclude…
Quality data on the tourism industry and its functional sub-sectors is critical to decision-making
The best means of putting very specific information in place is for the sectors to do it themselves
Challenging, but the information can be tailored to what is really needed, with the major gap at present around quality commercial information

51. Thank you… www.tourismresearch.govt.nz
The information used today can be found at: