Taranaki regional profiles

Venture Taranaki partners with data specialists Infometrics to provide detailed data about the Taranaki region. Find information about:

  • Economy
  • Employment
  • Productivity
  • Population
  • Businesses
  • Standard of living
  • Skills
  • Tourism
  • Wellbeing

If you require this information filtered by district, please email [email protected]

GDP per capita

Taranaki has the third highest GDP per capita in New Zealand.

Taranaki's total GDP was $9,599 Million by the year ended March 2022 (Provisional). GDP per capita in Taranaki is still significantly higher than the national average of $70,617.

Source: Stats NZ, March 2023

Taranaki GDP per capita

$75,643 Year ended March 2022, provisional

NZ average GDP per capita

$70,617 Year ended March 2022, provisional

Unemployment rates - regional comparison

Consumer Spend

Electronic card consumer spending in Taranaki Region as measured by Marketview, increased by 9.7% over the year to December 2022, compared to a year earlier. This compares with an increase of 10.3% in New Zealand.

Source: Infometrics Quarterly Economic Monitor

Annual spend over the year to Dec 2022

$1,713 M +9.7% since STLY

Visitor spend

Visitor spend is now broadly calculated using Tourism Electronic Card Transactions (TECTs). The TECTs are an interim replacement to Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates (MRTEs) that provide insights into monthly tourism spend. 

The MRTE series was disrupted by COVID-19, as the methodology for weighting the measured electronic card transaction spend up to the whole of industry spend became unusable.   

The TECTs instead aim to present the measured electronic card transactions (ECT) attributable to tourism but without any attempt to represent the total spend. This method is considered to be the best way to provide spend data to the industry while travel is severely affected by COVID-19 border restrictions. Users need to be aware of the limitations of this approach.      

They represent card spending only. 

The TECTS represent part of total tourism spend as they are based almost exclusively on physical electronic card transactions, and do not include any other form of spending such as cash, pre-purchases, or online spend. 

Source: MBIE Tourism and Electronic Card Transactions 

Taranaki visitor spend to December 2022

$282m +15.3%

New Plymouth visitor spend to December 2022

$225m +15%

South Taranaki visitor spend to December 2022

$41m +12.8%

Stratford District visitor spend to December 2022

$16m +26.7%

Guest nights

Description: Guest nights in Taranaki had a significant increase to 133.4K in Jan 2023 compared to the same month last year of 115.3K. Average guest nights stayed was 2.6.

Of these guest nights, 100.0K were in New Plymouth district, 12.6K in Stratford district, and 20.8K in South Taranaki district.

Guest Night refers to the number of guest nights spent in short-term accommodation units e.g. two guests staying 3 nights would generate 6 guest nights.

Source: Accommodation Data Programme 

Guest Nights

133.4K January 2023

Average Guest Nights Stayed

2.60 January 2023

Median House Price

Taranaki Region $685K in January 2023, +0.8% compared STLY, one of the only three regions (Gisborne and West Coast) seeing an increase in the median sale price compared to the same month last year.

Full Report

Source: REINZ, QVNZ and RBNZ

Taranaki Region

$685K in January 2023, +0.8% compared STLY
Taranaki Trends

Taranaki Trends is a bi-annual publication covering a wide range of national and regional measures, to enable Taranaki businesses and researchers to find key information and make informed decisions.

Search reports
Business Survey

The Taranaki Business Survey is a bi-annual business confidence survey, which goes out to a range of enterprises of different sizes and sectors.

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Search for reports

Browse Venture Taranaki's library of published data, including special projects and commissioned reports.