Births and Deaths… of Hospitality Businesses

(Sept 2008)

A search around the Statistics New Zealand website provides all sorts of interesting data lurking in the datasets and one we came across recently was the births and deaths of businesses by industry, which is in the dataset called New Zealand Business Demography Statistics (Dynamics). Although they include accommodation in with cafes and restaurants, it still gives a good picture of the way in which our industry has grown over the past few years. By Alistair Rowe

Hospitality Industry Births & Deaths 2001- 2007

Year                 2001   2002    2003   2004    2005    2006   2007

Births              1009    1209    1448    1671    1579    1401   1346

Deaths               915      790      742      738    1045   1142    1338

Net Growth        94      419      706       933      534     259          8

Another interesting feature is the survival rates of businesses

As of February 2007, of the 1009 businesses that started in 2001, 454 (45%) are still alive. 192, or 19%, didn’t make it to 2002.

The worst survival rate is Communication Services, and the largest category of businesses being born and dying each year is Property and Business Services which accounts for around 41% of start-ups each year. Funnily enough, the category with the greatest survival rate is Government administration and defence with a 100% survival rate of enterprises opening in 2002.

47 new departments (?) were born in the years 2001 to 2007 and only 22 went out of business in that period, meaning we now have 25 Government enterprises we didn’t have in 2000. The question mark is around whether they could legitimately be called businesses.

Provided by the Restaurant Association of New Zealand