Government review finds hospitality sector weighed down by fees and red tape
A government review into Aotearoa New Zealand's hospitality sector has found businesses are paying too many fees and struggling with licensing processes that are unclear and slow. The review puts forward 24 recommendations for ministers to consider.
The Ministry for Regulation launched the review last year to look at how restaurants, bars, clubs, cafés, market food stalls, food trucks, catering businesses and hotels deal with regulators, including local councils. Its findings, released this week, describe a sector weighed down by overlapping and outdated rules.
Among the 24 recommendations, the review suggests moving some hospitality businesses into a lower-risk category, scrapping annual or twice-yearly licence renewals, bringing in a single national application form, and appointing a new steward for the alcohol regulatory system. It also recommends reviewing building consent exemption conditions for temporary marquees — something event operators have flagged as a frustration for years.
On alcohol licensing, the review calls for removing the current licence types and replacing them with a single risk framework. A risk framework means businesses would be overseen based on how risky their operations are, rather than every business facing the same level of scrutiny. The review also recommends repealing the Hotel Association of New Zealand Act 1969, a law more than half a century old that the review says is no longer fit for purpose.
Tourism and Hospitality Minister Louise Upston described the sector as a $21.4 billion industry employing more than 193,000 people across the country. Upston said she will develop a Hospitality Action Plan to coordinate priority initiatives across government. The government's release, titled "Industry roadmap to help hospitality succeed," was published on the Beehive website on 3 September.
Regulation Minister David Seymour said the hospitality sector was hit hard by Covid and that red tape and "dumb rules" had made it difficult for the sector to bounce back. Seymour said ministers would decide which recommendations to accept in the coming weeks, but gave no specific timeframe and did not say which recommendations were likely to be prioritised.
The review's release follows the Hospitality Summit Report 2026, titled "Serving Success," published jointly by the Restaurant Association of New Zealand and Hospitality New Zealand on 4 September. That report sets out recommendations from the industry's own perspective, separate from but running alongside the government's review.
The Ministry for Regulation first flagged the hospitality review in October 2025, when it announced plans to cut unnecessary red tape and modernise rules for the sector. The review covered everything from sole-operator food trucks to large hotel complexes, looking at every point where those businesses interact with central and local government.
The scale of the proposed changes is considerable. Replacing existing alcohol licence types with a single risk framework would require a change to the law, as would repealing the Hotel Association of New Zealand Act 1969. A national application form would need coordination across all territorial authorities — the councils that currently run their own licensing processes under the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012. The proposed alcohol regulatory steward would be a new role that does not currently exist.
Moving some businesses to a lower-risk category builds on an approach already used in parts of the food safety system, where food businesses are classified according to the level of risk they pose. Extending that logic to hospitality licensing would mean businesses facing less frequent or lighter oversight depending on their risk profile, rather than the same rules applying to everyone regardless of size or type.
Scrapping annual or bi-annual licence renewals would, if accepted, remove a recurring administrative cost and compliance burden for operators. The review does not specify what would replace renewals as a way of checking ongoing compliance.
Upston's Hospitality Action Plan is intended as the vehicle through which the government would coordinate its response to the review alongside other hospitality-related work across agencies. No timeline for the action plan has been given.
The industry's own "Serving Success" report runs parallel to the government review, reflecting what operators themselves see as the priority reforms. Both documents landing in the same week suggests officials and sector bodies are broadly aligned on the need for structural change, though the two were produced independently.
For operators, the practical stakes are straightforward. A café owner dealing with multiple council fees, a hotel navigating an old licensing statute, or a marquee operator caught in building consent requirements all face costs and delays the review identifies as unnecessary. Whether those costs come down will depend on which of the 24 recommendations Cabinet accepts, and on the legislative and regulatory work that follows.
Seymour's indication that decisions are weeks away rather than months suggests the government intends to move relatively quickly on at least some of the review's proposals. What those proposals look like once they pass through Cabinet and into law drafting is a separate question, and one the sector will be watching closely.
