Welcome to a year in the life of the dynamic Wellington region.
The 12 months ending on June 30 have been a whirlwind of events, business engagement and visitors from near and far – a year of recovery and increased optimism about the future.
The city’s iconic St James Theatre hosted a full range of performances after being restored to its former glory; the first cruise ships after the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in October, and Ed Sheeran broke attendance records at Sky Stadium.
Then came the opening of Tākina, Wellington’s eye-catching convention and exhibition centre, which is expected to bring 500,000 people each year to the heart of the city.
WellingtonNZ continues to work across all the sectors that contribute to the region’s prosperity. We engage in global storytelling, tourism, venue management, supporting and attracting events, supporting business growth, workforce development, facilitating projects across the region and film permitting and attracting screen productions.
It’s been a busy year but one full of highlights – we’ve picked some of the best for our annual report.
Message from Wellington NZ Chair and Chief Executive
Wellington by the numbers
A new Regional Economic Development Plan
In August WellingtonNZ launched the Regional Economic Development Plan (REDP) that aims to guide the long-term direction of the economy and help drive high-impact economic initiatives and create jobs over the next 10 years.
It sets out the strategic direction, issues and opportunities, and guides where funding and support should go. The plan is about futureproofing the region and making sure it thrives economically as well as ensuring the Wellington-Wairarapa-Horowhenua region is a great place for everyone to live.
The REDP aims to help create some of the 100,000 new decent jobs needed in our region over the next 30 years due to expected population increase. It also aims to improve quality of life by supporting our region to be more productive, resilient, inclusive and sustainable with thriving Māori and Pasifika communities.
This first year of delivery has been spent establishing the foundations for success with early progress on regionally-significant initiatives including:
- Launching the Kapiti Coast Food & Beverage Game Plan in May. The plan was created by the industry for the industry and outlines the food and beverage sector’s strategic direction for the next five years.
- Engaging 57 attendees from 26 high-growth Wellington tech companies in technology leadership training workshops and consulting sessions, to ensure they have the best chance at becoming global leaders and major local employers.
- Supporting House of Science to increase their reach to more schools across our region, with a current focus on Wellington city and Porirua. Resource kits bookings in these areas increased 39% in the first half of 2023, enabling more students to experience science in primary and intermediate schools.
Connecting business
WellingtonNZ’s business growth team continued to connect businesses to the right advice, people and resources through the Regional Business Partner Network. The Government-funded network comprises 14 regional growth agencies nationwide building capacity and encouraging business innovation. Inquiries remained high across the year.
Launching local products into supermarkets
WellingtonNZ organised three emerging supplier forums in partnership with the Food Innovation Network and Foodstuffs. The forums were held in Wellington, Kāpiti and the Wairarapa in May 2023 and helped local businesses understand how to get more of their products into supermarkets and distribution channels.
Developing rautaki/strategy Māori
The national Māori economy was estimated to be valued at $69bn in 2018. In recognition of its importance to the regional economy, WellingtonNZ is working with its partners, including key strategic partner, Te Matarau a Māui, on Māori economic development for the region.
Through its mahi, WellingtonNZ provides access to capability training support for Pakihi Māori (Māori businesses), supports the iwi-led economic development aspirations in the Wairarapa and is a host of Māori initiatives through the REDP and other funding tagged for Māori economic development.
The Māori economic plan reflects a targeted approach of investment to achieve better outcomes over the short and long term. It is designed to bring together a coherent economic vision, reflecting a Te Ao Māori viewpoint that all things are connected.
Te Matarau a Māui has five strategic pillars:
- Iwi, Māori collectives and Māori business growth
- Investing in education, training and employment for Māori
- Innovative, infrastructure and information
- Enabling strong Māori communities and environments
- Māori leadership, governance and collaboration
Highlights that reference the five pillars:
- Sponsorship and support of events to bring businesses together, grow connections and raise awareness of social/progressive procurement and available support
- Other REDP initiatives focused on attraction, improving educational outcomes and land use feasibility
- Current state analysis to obtain insights from participants on the regional procurement system
- Te Matarau a Māui delivered Tipu Pakihi, an inaugural Māori business symposium at Pipitea Marae. This event aimed to bring early stage businesses together and to grow connections across the region.
- Ngāti Toa delivered a pilot STEM mentorship programme at Tītahi Bay Intermediate and Mana College. The programme raised awareness of and interest in STEM subjects and careers.
We continue to strengthen our relationships across the region by applying the key principles of whakawhanaungatanga, manaakitanga and pūkenga.
Technology strategy
WellingtonNZ’s technology strategy has a multi-pronged approach to raising the profile of the tech sector in Wellington.
It includes scaling up the inception of new companies, supporting existing high growth companies to become major employers, attracting investment to Wellington and promoting tech careers and inspiring the next generation of talent.
Tech Week in May saw WellingtonNZ involved in supporting 40 events across the region with the tech sector team organising five of those focusing on areas such as recruitment, women in tech and tech careers.
A range of other tech focused initiatives were also held throughout the year. These included:
- Incubator programme supported 10 companies with potential to become major employers
- Leadership development programme for people working in senior positions in high-growth tech companies
- Marketing campaign to launch Cleantech campaign to support CleanTech companies and position Wellington as a science city and leader in climate response technology.
March 2023 officially marked 20 years of operation for Creative HQ. Over that time we have contributed to the following through our startup incubation and acceleration programmes:
332 startups on the Creative HQ platform
24% investment successfully raised capital
$290m new investment raised by accelerated businesses, $171m of that for Wellington based startups
$1.2b combined valuation of CHQ startups who are still operating today.
In the current financial year, Creative HQ continued to accelerate innovation across start-ups, government and enterprise within Wellington, New Zealand and beyond.
$43m new investment raised by accelerated businesses (alumni and Impact Accelerator ventures)
8 new Wellington start-ups on the Creative HQ platform (from the Impact Accelerator)
8 new investment ready companies assisted through Creative HQ programmes (from the Impact Accelerator)
$1.4m – value of Callaghan Innovation R&D grants to local business
Callaghan Innovation support work: 150 product referrals, 83 customer visits, 118 innovator companies assisted, 71 innovation action plans.
MBIE Capability support work: 263 actively engaged customers, 47 Māori owned, 1 Pasifika owned, 63 female led businesses. Almost $1m invested in training spend for SMEs through co-funding models.
This financial year saw the launch of a new pre-incubation programme, aimed to assist very early stage founders to begin their journey and keep the pipeline of new future startups strong.
589 unique founders attended many speaker sessions and 1:1 consultation sessions.
5 eLearning modules launched to enable founders to self-learn basic skills.
Creative HQ in partnership with WellingtonNZ executed a number of initiatives under the Wellington Regional Economic Development Plan.
3 leadership series workshops for high-growth Wellington companies with 62 attendees
2 fireside events with international speakers attracting 176 attendees
800 students from 25 Wellington schools attended a Tech Careers Event to raise awareness of high-paying tech career pathways
And Creative HQ continued to connect the innovation ecosystem through a series of events designed to enable to entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to build capability and collaborate through their work.
44 events delivered
1,989 in person event attendees
174 hours of community connection
This year we have helped to provide opportunities for more than 500 students to a work integrated learning opportunity, an internship or graduate role or a workplace visit.
We have worked with the Ministry of Education on a series of workplace visits for 194 year 12 and 13 students. Students have been able to select a business that is of interest and “get a feel” for what it might be like to work in a similar environment, hear from some of the employees about their career journeys and generally add to their tool kit of knowledge as they take their next career steps.
Working with Summer of Tech, we trialled an extension into mechanical engineering that resulted in 15 engineering internships. Overall, Summer of Tech successfully placed 246 students into internships and graduate roles into 60 businesses in 2022/23.
The striking Tākina Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre, a purpose-built venue opposite Te Papa, is the city’s newest jewel in the crown. Built with sustainability to the forefront, Tākina comprises two halls of conference space and a public gallery to host touring exhibitions. Opened in June, it was built to enable Wellington to attract international and domestic conferences to benefit the region. It is expected to bring in and protect business worth about $45 million a year to Wellington’s economy, bring in about 500,000 people to the central city. It has capacity for up to 1600 attendees.
Tākina’s inaugural exhibition was Jurassic World by Brickman, an immersive experience of six million Lego bricks. It will be succeeded by the world premiere of Marvel: Earth’s Mightiest Exhibition. It opened on King’s Birthday Weekend.
Already Tākina is hosting conferences that would otherwise not have chosen Wellington and several international and has secured events worth $34 million. A number of international and domestic conferences were booked in the past year and will take place at Tākina in the coming years.
Lights, camera...Wellington
One of the highlights of the year was the production of a high quality showreel showcasing the Wellington region for the screen industry. It promotes locations, creative capabilities, and studio infrastructure for international and domestic productions. The industry came together and collaborated on the showreel with many donating time, expertise and facilities to make the modest budget go further. It features cameos and endorsements from Sir Richard Taylor, Sir Peter Jackson, Dame Jane Campion and James Cameron. The showreel, launched at Park Road Post by Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau, is being widely used by our studios and the New Zealand Film Commission.
UNESCO Creative City status embraced
As a UNESCO City of Film, Wellington continues to provide opportunities for under-represented and under-served communities in the screen industry. This includes support of local film festivals, lecture series, workshops, training and inspiring the next generation through free screenings and director talks.
US studio bosses drop in
Early April saw the arrival of five US film studio and streamer executives in New Zealand to look at the country’s capacity for creating quality international films and television series on a trip initiated by the NZ Film Commission. While in the Wellington region, the group visited significant film infrastructure, unique locations and met with leaders in the screen sector. They also spent a night in the Wairarapa meeting Sir Richard Taylor and Lady Tania Rodgers.
Borders reopen, overseas visitors return
The welcome reopening of New Zealand’s international border came in July, three months ahead of schedule. The sights and sounds of international visitors back on Wellington streets marked a step change from COVID restrictions, but also meant some long hours getting processes back up and running to cater for our manuhiri.
The multi-agency approach required to host about 150,000 cruise passengers over six months was smooth sailing - aided in part by a pre-season workshop organised by WellingtonNZ for businesses to help them prepare.
We welcomed the first cruise ship into the harbour on 25 October as they brought vibrancy and economic impact to the region.
By early April when the season wrapped up, 90 ships had docked in the city. Wellingtonians once again proved their reputation as great hosts, spearheaded by the army of volunteer Wellington City Ambassadors who assist passengers to find their way in the city.
TRENZ heading to Wellington
International tourism buyers returned to New Zealand for the first time since 2019 for TRENZ – New Zealand’s largest international tourism business event.
TRENZ brought together hundreds of international buyers to meet with New Zealand’s leading tourism operators over four days in Christchurch. WellingtonNZ led a capital contingent in a series of successful meetings that culminated in the city being announced as the 2024 TRENZ host – a first for Wellington. The event will be held at Tākina in May and brings the opportunity to about 300 international travel sellers.
Busy bees at isite
Once borders lifted and visitors returned, WellingtonNZ’s isite office became a busy hub for people seeking advice and information. isite assists an average of 850 people a day at peak times and this year served more than 74,000 customers. Staff were also called on to support travellers impacted by a series of extreme weather events around the country over summer as assistance was sought with making alternate plans.
Visitor spend rebounds
In what has been dubbed the year of tourism recovery, Wellington international visitor spend returned to pre-COVID levels with a particularly strong demand for accommodation. It was a strong result, given that Wellington domestic air capacity is still down on pre-COVID levels. Overall tourism card spending data in Wellington region increased by 26.7% in the year to June 2023, compared to a year earlier. Total spend was approximately $1348 million, with $261m from international spend and just under 1.1b from domestic card spend. This is just under a 10% increase on pre-pandemic expenditure ($1,227m YE June 2019).
Advancing Destination Pōneke
Significant progress has been made to implement the actions identified in Destination Pōneke, WellingtonNZ’s roadmap for how the city develops as a visitor destination. Of 71 actions identified in the destination management plan, 60 are either under way or complete including:
12 businesses completed a 12-week sustainability programme in line with Wellington’s ambition to be a carbon neutral city by 2050.
Ongoing interaction with travel sellers saw more than 1100 agents and decision makers trained, 88 hosted on familiarisations and more than 4000 Chinese agents reached via live-streaming to ensure Wellington was on the itinerary for international visitors to New Zealand.
Accommodation opportunities
A report commissioned by WellingtonNZ on the city’s future accommodation demand showed that Tākina Wellington Convention & Exhibition Centre and natural growth, presented significant opportunity for development to ensure supply meets demand. WellingtonNZ Is working with city partners on strategies to address this.
$103meconomic impact from major events (also including business, performance events)
If anything signalled a return to life pre-COVID, it was the staging of major events. Wellington’s year of recovery was significantly boosted by hosting international sports matches, music concerts and a range of festivals including:
Sky Stadium hosted a record-breaking 48,000-strong crowd for the Ed Sheeran concert making it the facility’s largest single- day event. This was supported by a waterfront activation called The Road To Ed promoting a range of local musicians
WOW was back with a record audience of just under 64,000 people over 18 shows - 66% of those were from outside the Wellington region
The Football Ferns played the US team in a pre FIFA Women’s World Cup warm-up match
The Vodafone Warriors played the Knights in an NRL match at Sky Stadium
Wellington On a Plate’s May edition sold the majority of its events and Beervana in August was sold out
The Homegrown music festival returned to the waterfront
Kia Mau, a contemporary indigenous arts festival, took place in June
Toast Martinborough showcased the Wairarapa wine industry
Guns ‘n Roses rocked Sky Stadium in December
Tākina Wellington Convention & Exhibition opening exhibition was Jurassic World by Brickman which has thrilled lego lovers of all ages
Pigeons attracting talent
WellingtonNZ successfully launched the Only in Wellington campaign in July promoting Wellington as a place of business to support the attraction of talent and a place that is full of stories of success. The campaign saw strong engagement across media platforms. Beyond digital content, the campaign placed 10 bronze cast pigeons around the city to tell the successful stories of businesses where the city influenced owners and gave them confidence to expand. The pigeons were designed to playfully interact with each business.
Little and long
A domestic campaign aimed at summer travellers launched in November around the theme “A little Wellington goes a long way”. This work showcased a smorgasbord of short break activities in Wellington with some humour thrown in to help it stand out on social and digital channels. It performed well with more than 6.9 million impressions – a 4.1% increase compared to an earlier, similar campaign, and 2.7 million completed video views. The campaign was extended to target a young audience living outside the region and drive awareness of a packed summer events calendar. A partnership with Air NZ supported campaign activity.
A little more
The success of the summer campaign saw the theme refreshed for a winter campaign in 2023, again it focused on digital and social media channels, as well as out of home, cinema and content placements to drive awareness and travel to Wellington over winter and beyond. More than 9 million impressions and 2.7 million completed video views were achieved. Reaching into Australia
Two content partnerships were run with lifestyle publisher Broadsheet over the past year, targeting Australian audiences. The partnership exceeded expectations, achieving a reach of 1.6 million and engagement of 25,000 across Facebook and Instagram. We have also forged a partnership with Qantas, engaging more than 900,000 Frequent Flyer members through a dedicated content campaign, and following this with digital display activity to drive further awareness of Wellington as a destination for Australian manuhiri.
Wild about trails
A Regional Trails summer awareness campaign, What’s Your Wild, launched in December led by content featuring everyday Wellingtonians with the aim of promoting trails for all walks of life across the city and region. Targeting Wellington regional audiences, the campaign has had more than 155,000 reach on digital ads with 45,000 video views and 8,000 landing views.
Advent calendar shines
The 2022 WellingtonNZ advent calendar succeeded in driving engagement and value for Wellington business with 274,000 voucher downloads – up 25% on 2021. The calendar generated almost $400,000 in spend. A physical launch of an “advent vending machine” shared Wellington-related gifts across the city on four occasions.
FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023
In the lead-up to Wellington hosting nine matches in this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, WellingtonNZ began executing its plan to make the most of the tournament for the city with a range of milestone events and announcements.
The countdown and activities began in earnest with the launch of a “100 days to go” event at the waterfront featuring the FIFA Unity pitch at Queens Wharf where a range of communities, organisations and officials played football to promote the tournament.
WellingtonNZ staff were tasked with ensuring the city would be ready for FIFA and leading the multi-organisation project.
St James stages a comeback
June marked the reopening of one of Wellington’s most loved theatres - The St James on Courtenay Place. Earthquake strengthened and restored to its former glory, the St James had been closed for three years and lovingly refurbished with upgrades to staging, lighting, sound and rigging systems. The first performance in the all new and improved theatre was the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra playing with singer-songwriter TEEKS.
Scores of sold-out performances including:
NZ International Comedy Festival
Kia Mau festival
Our people are crucial to our success. We cannot deliver on our vision without a team of high performing and engaged people. We continue to focus on our culture, engagement, and development.
Our engagement score continues to rise year on year and rose 2 percentage points during this current year. Additionally in our latest pulse survey, 81 per cent of respondents felt they would recommend WellingtonNZ as a great place to work.
During 2023 we have two cohorts of our leaders undertaking leadership development programmes. We believe great leaders are a vital part of our strategy for success and the results of this ongoing development and growth are visible already within our organisation.
In our latest pulse survey, there was an 11-percentage point rise in a positive response to “their direct manager being a great role model”.
Our people told us that after the difficult Covid-affected years that our values no longer resonated with them. We have worked during the year with our people on redefining our values, to ensure they reflect how our people currently believe we should interact and will continue to help guide how we do things.
In the past year WellingtonNZ has achieved EarthCheck bronze accreditation for its Victoria St office and the St James Theatre – adding them to the list of bronze accredited venues the Michael Fowler Centre, Opera House, TSB Arena and Shed 6.
The EarthCheck programme is the world’s leading scientific benchmarking certification and advisory group for sustainable travel and tourism.
Achieving Bronze accreditation includes collecting and assessing data such as power and gas, and ensuring an organisation-wide waste management plan is in place. Waste systems have been a key focus in the past year. WellingtonNZ has worked closely with the Sustainability Trust, which has delivered waste audit training. Valuable information and knowledge have been obtained highlighting key areas of improvement. The next step calls for better visibility of our recycling programme.
WellingtonNZ has also been involved in a Wellington-wide initiative, Wash Up Welly which aims to create a scalable reusable cup business for events and the community. The initiative has received funding and is now recruiting for someone to start the business.
Click here for Financial Statements and Statement of Service Performance