In a newsletter to members and introduced by new chief executive officer Jacqui Lloyd, the association points out that these statistics are key to delivering NZCA’s Annual Cruise Economic Overview and provide all unique passenger and crew numbers by ports visited, overall value for the sector and a breakdown of spend by region.

‘This is incredibly disappointing as there is no way of quantifying the benefit of cruise in a national and regional context, particularly after the first cruise season in three years,’ the newsletter says.

‘Central government, local government and regional tourism organisations rely on robust qualified data to guide their decisions around infrastructure investment, port expansion, tourism product development, as well as for the implementation of destination management plans and cruise strategies.’

NZCA notes that StatsNZ is currently seeking feedback in its proposed data quality plan for measuring an inclusive and sustainable economy and the outcome of this feedback will determine if cruise data is captured in the future.

The association says it is working with as many avenues as possible with MBIE and StatsNZ to try and secure spend data for the 2022-23 season.