Vacation nation: where Kiwis like to holiday

Wednesday, 23 July 2014, 2:06 pm
Press Release: Roy Morgan Research

Vacation nation: where Kiwis like to holiday

Whether you’re an adrenalin junkie or beach bunny, nature enthusiast or amateur vulcanologist, New Zealand has a holiday destination to suit — which could explain why 62% of Kiwis aged 14+ took at least one domestic holiday in the year to April 2014. Of course, the lure of foreign shores can be hard to resist, and 25% of New Zealanders ventured overseas in the same period. So who are the country’s most avid globetrotters and who prefers homegrown holidays? Roy Morgan’s in-depth profiling tool Helix Personas reveals all…

Leading Lifestyles: leading the charge overseas

With few exceptions, Helix personas* falling within the affluent, high-achieving Leading Lifestyles community* are more likely than the average Kiwi to have taken an overseas holiday in the last year. The personas most likely to have done so are Bluechips(46%) and Smart Money (47%), with some subtle differences between their destination preferences.

The US is favoured by the highest proportion of Bluechips (32%), which makes sense given this group’s love of big cities and shopping. England (22%), France and Italy (both 16%) are also popular destinations, satisfying their love of cultural pursuits and fine dining.

Leading Lifestyles: New Zealand’s leading globetrotters

Source: Roy Morgan Single Source (New Zealand), May 2013 – April 2014 (n = 11,848).

For highly educated, well-paid Smart Money individuals, England (29%) and the US (26%) are popular destination preferences. Both countries are diverse and dynamic enough to appeal to this persona’s exuberant, independent spirit.

Domestic holidays: 100% pure fun

Once again, it’s the Leading Lifestyles community that is most likely to have holidayed domestically in the last 12 months (particularly Bluechip and Self-made Lifestylers), with 70% of them taking at least one trip within New Zealand during this time. However, a couple of personas within other communities also stand out for their domestic travel habits.

For example, 74% of New School Cool took a holiday within New Zealand in the last year, as did 72% of Career and Kids.

Home, sweet home: top 10 Helix personas who took a domestic holiday in the last 12 months

Source: Roy Morgan Single Source (New Zealand), May 2013 – April 2014 (n = 11,848).

New School Cool’s preferred domestic destination is the Greater Auckland area: 30% name it as somewhere they’d like to holiday. The region’s mix of big-city attractions and natural splendour would appeal to this persona’s simultaneously trendy, urban and environmentally aware tendencies. For New School Cool individuals based in Auckland, the area would make an easy ‘staycation’; but for the many who live in Wellington, it’s distant enough to feel like a real holiday.

Family-oriented Career & Kids also favour the Greater Auckland area (32%) but are partial to the South Island’s Canterbury/Christchurch area too (26%), where a myriad of kid-friendly activities such as skiing, swimming, and whale-spotting await them.

Pip Elliott, General Manager, Roy Morgan Research NZ, says:

“Though Metrotechs and Leading Lifestyles are both wealthy communities with the financial means to take holidays pretty much wherever they wish, they differ in terms of their preferred destinations. Even between apparently similar personas within each community, there are marked differences in destination preferences.

“Metrotech individuals love both overseas and domestic travel and many of them take advantage of New Zealand’s world-class natural attractions and opportunities for adventure in the open air. Meanwhile, Leading Lifestyles’ sophistication and worldliness sees them jetting off to classic international destinations more than the average Kiwi.

“Of course, holidays aren’t just the privilege of the wealthy: lower-income personas such as Back to Nature (from the more mature Golden Years community) and Areas in Transition (from the financially constrained Battlers community) are also more likely than the average Kiwi to have taken a domestic holiday in the last 12 months; while Making the Rent(from the Getting By community) are slightly more likely to have holidayed overseas.

“The unprecedented depth of knowledge that Helix Personas can provide is invaluable for destination marketers and tourism agencies looking to pin-point precisely who their existing and potential markets are — and how they differ beneath their superficially similar surfaces.”

* Helix Communities: seven major segments of the New Zealand population, defined using a combination of Census data, 3rd-party data, Roy Morgan Single Source and Values Segments.

* Helix Personas: 51 distinct groups that fall within these communities, classifying New Zealand consumers across a variety of attributes to provide a holistic and in-depth view of customers that transcends standard geo-demographics to incorporate attitudes, values and behavioural aspects.

Read this release in full on our website. [includes charts]

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Roy Morgan Research

New Zealand's leading social and market research company

A full service research organisation specialising in omnibus and syndicated data, Roy Morgan Research has over 70 years' experience in collecting objective, independent information on consumers. Roy Morgan Research was set up in New Zealand in the 1990s and has been collecting information across a wide range of industries in New Zealand ever since. Roy Morgan currently has over 10 years of trended data on a geographically and demographically representative sample of over 12,000 New Zealanders aged 14+.

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