Freedom camping by international visitors in New Zealand

The International Visitor Survey provides two measures of the extent of freedom camping by international visitors in New Zealand:

• the number of visitors for whom freedom camping was their main form of accommodation; and
• the number of visitors who freedom camped at least once in their visit to New Zealand.

The exact definition of freedom camping in the International Visitor Survey is “Free camping – staying at a place that is NOT an official camp site, in a tent, caravan, campervan / motorhome”.

Statistics on freedom campers can vary significantly from year to year. This is because only around three percent of all international visitors have done some freedom camping and the International Visitor Survey samples only a small proportion of all international visitors. The average sample size over the past five years is around 370 for visitors who did any freedom camping and 70 for visitors who mainly freedom camped. Individual figures and year on year changes should be treated with caution, but trends over many years are more informative.

In this article, we have chosen to focus only on the visitors who did some freedom camping at any point in their visit to New Zealand. This is because it provides a larger sample with which to produce statistics, and captures visitors who use a mix of different forms of accommodation.

Statistics on visitors who used freedom camping as their main form of accommodation may be available on request.

The number of freedom camping visitors is proportionally small but growing

The number of international visitors that did some freedom camping in New Zealand has risen further recently, from 60,000 in the year ended 2015 to around 110,000 in the year ended 2017. This followed a period of moderate growth from around 20,000 visitors, 10 years prior to 2015.

Total estimated spending by visitors who did some freedom camping has also increased significantly in this period, from $290 million in 2015 to $530 million in 2017.

The growth in numbers and spending from this group of visitors followed a similar pattern to that seen for total international visitors. However, even with this increase, only three per cent of visitors to New Zealand did some freedom camping in 2016 and 2017.

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German visitors were more likely to freedom camp than others

German visitors were nearly three times as likely to do some freedom camping in New Zealand than any other of the other top visitor markets. Over the last two years, 17 per cent of German visitors (16,000 per year) did some freedom camping while in New Zealand, compared to visitors from the UK who were the next highest with six per cent.

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…however Australian visitors make up the largest number of freedom campers

Even though German visitors were the most likely to do some freedom camping in New Zealand, the visitor market with the highest number overall was Australia. Of the total number of visitors who did some freedom camping, Australian visitors made up 25 per cent of these – an average of 28,000 per year. Germany was the next highest market, with an average 16,000 per year (14 per cent of the total).

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Freedom campers tended to stay longer and therefore spend more

International visitors to New Zealand who did some freedom camping had a tendency to spend more on average. The general trend has seen a very slight increase since the early 2000s, up to around $4,700 per visitor in 2017, however this was most likely caused by inflation.

One of the major reasons for a high average spend per visitor is that people who did some free camping tended to stay longer. The average length of stay for visitors who did some freedom camping was 51 days in 2017, three times longer than the average of all other visitors (17 days). Even though the last 10 years has shown a slight decline in the average length of stay for all visitors (down from 19 to 17 days), visitors who did some freedom camping are staying even longer (up from 35 to 51 days).

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…although, freedom campers spent less per day

On average, visitors who do some freedom camping spend a lot less per day than all visitors. In 2017, visitors who did some freedom camping spent, on average, less than half as much per day ($90) compared with all visitors ($190). The available data does not include a breakdown of what visitors are spending on, so it is not possible to assess what freedom camping visitors are spending less on relative to other visitors. Less spending on accommodation would most likely be a big factor, but this is possibly also related to the regional dispersal these visitors (see following section).

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Freedom campers visit more regions

Visitors who did some freedom camping tend to have dispersed more around the country, visiting around double the amount of regions that total international visitors to New Zealand did. In the year ended 2017, people who did some freedom camping visited 6.8 regions on average, with all visitors only visiting 3.1 on average.