Consumer spending growth in January 2025 lifted across regional areas of New Zealand while larger regions and cities continued to lag.
This is according to new data from Worldline NZ through tracking spending across core retail merchants.
Total payments hit NZ$4.11 billion in January 2025, up 0.4 per cent compared to the same month in 2024.
Hospitality spending was NZ$1.03 billion, up 1.7 per cent on the same month last year, and the core retail sector excluding hospitality merchants saw spending hit NZ$3.08 billion, unchanged on 12 months earlier.
Retail NZ CEO Carolyn Young said the data continues to show how challenging retail is in New Zealand right now.
“A flat result on the back of increasing prices and population growth in real terms would be a decline,” Young said.
“We know that the average sale is down as consumer confidence continues to show New Zealanders are concerned about their job security and ability to meet core household expenses.”
Worldline NZ chief sales officer Bruce Proffit said the slight rise might be modest, but positive annual growth will be appreciated by merchants.
“Spending has been below year-ago levels in eight of the previous 12 months, including in the busy month of December, so a positive number is a nice change,” Proffit said.
“However, January 2025 included an extra Thursday and Friday, which are usually two of the busier days of the week, so the headline result does not necessarily represent a fundamental increase in consumer spending habits. What’s more, spending is still declining in Auckland/Northland and Wellington.”
Spending over the two major long weekends, Auckland Anniversary for the northern regions and Wellington Anniversary for southern North Island regions, saw spending running above year-ago levels.
Proffit said Aucklanders appear to have favoured holidays in the Bay of Plenty and Waikato, judging by their respective 5.7 per cent and 5.4 per cent lift in core retail spending in these regions over the Auckland Anniversary long weekend.
“Meanwhile, Wellingtonians tended to holiday more this year in the Wairarapa, where Core Retail spending was up 11 per cent on the Wellington Anniversary long weekend last year.”
Annual Core Retail spending growth for the month was strongest in the West Coast (up 6.7 per cent), Whanganui (up 5.2 per cent) and Otago (up 4.7 per cent).
Noteworthy annual declines were recorded in Auckland/Northland (down 0.7 per cent), Wellington (down 2.1 per cent) and Marlborough (down 3.6 per cent).
“A final thing to note is that we have taken the start of a new year to revert to reporting the Core Retail sector in total rather than splitting off the Hospitality merchants. This split was appropriate during Covid and in the following years, but is less relevant today,” Proffit said.