The economic impact of tourism on Rotorua

Abstract

In recent years tourism has been one of the fastest growing sectors of the New Zealand economy, and has become particularly important in some of the smaller communities. What is uncertain is just how important the industry is, both in terms of its direct impacts and also its indirect impacts. The objective of this study was to estimate the relationship between such direct and indirect effects by surveying a sample of tourism businesses to find out their expenditure patterns, to incorporate this information into a model of the regional economy and calculate tourism multipliers (the ratio of direct impacts to total impacts for various types of visitor expenditure), and to see if this ratio is changing over time. During the research it became necessary to calculate the direct visitor expenditure by a survey of visitors to Rotorua to establish relative rates of expenditure in different sectors, and to apply these ratios to existing data on output of the accommodation industry. An estimate of direct employment in the visitor attractions industry was made on the basis of this project's census of businesses involved in visitor activities and attractions. This was used with this project's estimates of employment : output ratios to also calculate output for the attractions industry.