International Travel

Where the data comes from International Travel and Migration statistics are based on electronic arrival and departure records for each passenger supplied to Statistics NZ by the New Zealand Customs Service. These electronic records include flight and passport details, such as date of travel, date of birth, sex, and country of citizenship. The New Zealand Customs Service also supplies Statistics NZ with arrival and departure cards from every passenger. Additional detail such as country of residence and travel purpose is captured from these cards and added to the information from the electronic record. Immigration New Zealand owns the arrival and departure cards, which are used to administer numerous New Zealand laws, in addition to producing statistics. Statistics NZ only captures information from the cards for statistical purposes, and passes the cards to Immigration New Zealand after it has captured the data. How the data is collected Statistics NZ scans every arrival and departure card, and uses image recognition technology to automatically recognise and code responses from each. Processing staff then manually capture any required information which was not captured automatically - as not every response can be clearly recognised by automated software. The imaging system automatically determines all the information required for almost 9 in every 10 cards (meaning about one million still require manual completion each year). Some response fields are required from each card. These include the passport number and birth date, so each card can be matched to the electronic record supplied by Customs containing passport and flight details. Also, responses to length of stay/absence and country last/next lived in questions are required from every card, to determine the person's passenger type (overseas visitor, NZ-resident traveller, or permanent and long-term migrant). Most other response fields are only required for a sample of passengers, and required fields vary by passenger type and direction. Responses to some questions are not captured at all, including the first and last names of the passenger. Responses to questions on the back of the arrival card are not captured, nor are responses to the seat number, email address, and phone number questions on the front of the arrival card. Passenger counts International Travel and Migration statistics relate to the number of passenger movements to and from New Zealand, rather than to the number of people – that is, the multiple movements of individual people during a given reference period are each counted separately. For example, a New Zealand resident making five business trips overseas within a year would be counted as five arrivals and five departures. Determination of passenger type Passenger type is determined from responses to questions on the arrival and departure cards about how long the person is in or away from New Zealand, and where they are living for 12 months or more. A person's travel history (their other arrivals and departures) will also be used to determine their passenger type. Changes in intentions A person may change their intentions after their arrival or departure, which may mean the recorded passenger type becomes incorrect. For instance, a person who indicated they were arriving for a short-term stay may actually stay permanently. In this case, they would be recorded as a short-term overseas visitor, even though they became a permanent and long-term migrant. Statistics NZ does not revise published statistics to adjust for such changes. Seasonally adjusted and trend series Statistics NZ also produces seasonally adjusted and trend series for each of the passenger types and directions (eg total visitor arrivals). These series attempt to remove regular seasonal variation so each month (or quarter) can be compared. Seasonally adjusted figures are only estimates, and are revised every month as more data becomes available. Trend series are a smoothed version of the seasonally adjusted series. Statistics NZ can provide assistance on the interpretation of seasonally adjusted and trend series. If quoting seasonally adjusted and/or trend series, this should be clearly stated. Confidentiality Statistics NZ releases statistics derived from arriving and departing passenger records. It does not release the records of individual passengers. en-NZ