Suffering travel envy as your friends post photos to social media of Mediterranean beaches, European landmarks and exotic food? Turns out more and more of us are booking flights and heading overseas, after years of pandemic travel disruptions.
Emirates resumed flights between Dubai and Christchurch on its A380 aircraft in March. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
International travel is back and it's booming – and thousands of Kiwis are jetting off to warmer climes as the rest of us shiver our way through winter.
"The demand for travel, which came back very strongly when borders opened, just hasn't seemed to have eased at all," Grant Bradley, the New Zealand Herald's business deputy editor and aviation writer, tells The Detail.
"At the start, it was very much catching up with friends and relatives who you haven't seen for two or three years. But as time has gone on, you've seen the big return of leisure travel and also corporate travel."
Bradley says even though airfares have "skyrocketed" in the last 18 months, customers are finally starting to get some good news.
"In the 12 months to March, in New Zealand anyway, international fares were up around about 17 percent. In the latest quarter...they seem to have come back a little – so for those three months – down 12 percent. It's going to be interesting to see whether that's a long-term trend."
And more New Zealanders are travelling overseas: Stats NZ figures show the number of New Zealanders who headed offshore in May doubled to more than 200,000, compared to the same month last year.
"That's still not near the numbers that there were travelling before the pandemic, but folks have a lot more confidence about going back there into the world," Bradley says.
Data also shows a lot more people are eyeing overseas trips. A recent survey by Angus & Associates found about three in 10 people are intending to travel in the next six months.
"That exit of people going away – whether it's for a fly-and-flop holiday in Fiji or further afield – that trend's certainly running strong."
Brent Thomas is the chief operating officer of House of Travel and the president of the Travel Agents' Association of New Zealand.
He says it's great to be "effectively booming" – and the travel industry "is back well and truly on its feet."
Why does he think there's a boom now?
"If you look at it, you have a week of grey weather and everyone starts to feel a bit depressed, and there's nothing like going to Fiji, Rarotonga or something and having a 28 degree day and sunny weather – it just makes you feel better. From an outbound travel point of view, the high season is May through to September, early October, when people do travel."
Thomas says House of Travel is running at about 80 to 90 percent of its 2019 customer numbers, but the dollar value is higher.
"That is simply because the fares are still slightly higher now than they were in 2019 for some routes."
He says the fastest growing customer base is those between 25 and 40 – it's grown by 40 percent from 2019.
"We also see the more mature part of the market recognise that they've only got so much travelling left in them. They were a little bit more hesitant to travel in 2022, coming out of Covid, but we've seen the increase in bookings for 2023 and particularly going into 2024."
And pandemic-era restrictions are well and truly behind us.
"There are very few places that have Covid issues in terms of requirements, and New Zealand was one of the last countries to come out of the quarantine situation – the world had moved on...we were probably six to nine months behind a lot of the world in that regard.
"But we are where we are today and people are travelling in record numbers and getting out there and seeing the world again."
Hear more about why Kiwis are jetting off overseas by listening to the full podcast episode.
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