The topics discussed at this year’s Hospitality Summit will be familiar to hospitality operators: finding and retaining skilled people, navigating licensing and compliance, building stronger training pathways and creating the conditions for hospitality businesses to grow.
Those discussions have now been brought together in the Serving Success: Hospitality Summit Report 2026, released by the Restaurant Association and Hospitality New Zealand.
The report adds 13 further recommendations arising from the 2026 Summit, while continuing the work that began following the first Summit in 2024. Of the original 63 recommendations, 21 have now been completed or are nearing completion.
Hospitality’s voice at Parliament
The 2026 Hospitality Summit was held at Parliament on 12 March and hosted by Minister for Tourism and Hospitality Hon Louise Upston, together with the Restaurant Association and Hospitality New Zealand.
It brought hospitality operators from around the country together with government representatives and officials. With the conversation grounded in the day-to-day realities of running a hospitality business, our industry had a direct opportunity to explain where current settings are creating unnecessary costs, delays or barriers to growth.
The conversations covered five areas:
- employment and immigration
- alcohol policy
- tourism and hospitality
- data, licensing and regulatory compliance
- skills and training.
What are the 13 new recommendations?
The 13 further recommendations reflect issues raised through industry feedback and during the Summit itself. We are calling for:
- giving greater recognition to practical hospitality experience and career progression within immigration pathways
- improving access to immigration advisers with specialist industry knowledge
- reframing the object of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act to recognise hospitality’s positive social role and contribution to harm minimisation
- setting stricter timeframes for regulatory agencies to lodge objections to alcohol licence applications
- developing an internationally facing culinary brand for New Zealand
- strengthening links between Tourism New Zealand and our food and beverage sector
- establishing a Government subvention fund to help attract business events
- better protecting established venues when residential development moves into nightlife precincts
- encouraging night-time economy strategies that recognise the value of hospitality
- ensuring businesses can recover genuine payment-processing costs
- better coordinating building consent and alcohol licensing processes
- funding for Year 11 hospitality courses
- developing modern formal training for specialist areas of our industry, including coffee.
Government announces Hospitality Action Plan
In welcoming the report, Minister Upston also announced that the Government is developing a Hospitality Action Plan to provide a more coordinated approach to hospitality priorities across Government.
This is an important next step. The issues affecting hospitality often sit across several different portfolios, government agencies and levels of government. The Action Plan is intended to bring together work already underway, consider relevant recommendations from the Summit Report alongside other Government work programmes, and provide greater visibility across the Government’s hospitality work.
The Minister has committed to continuing to work in partnership with our industry as the Action Plan is developed, with a focus on removing barriers to growth and supporting hospitality businesses and our teams. We welcome the commitment to this more coordinated approach.
Continuing the work already underway
The latest recommendations build on solid progress from the first Summit in 2024. This includes changes to Easter trading restrictions and Accredited Employer Work Visa settings, work on alcohol licensing reform, the development of hospitality data and wellbeing resources, and the arrival of the MICHELIN Guide in New Zealand.
There is still more to do across the original recommendations, particularly in areas such as skills and training. The latest recommendations give us a clear next set of priorities without losing sight of that existing work.
Importantly, the report reflects what our industry has said it needs. The recommendations have come directly from the experiences of hospitality businesses and the people working across our sector. They focus on practical changes that would reduce unnecessary barriers, support investment and growth, and help us build rewarding, sustainable careers in hospitality.
The Summit gives us an important opportunity to put those experiences directly in front of Government. Our focus now is on turning that engagement into changes that operators can see and feel in their day-to-day businesses.
Some recommendations will take longer than others, particularly where legislative change is required. We will continue working with Ministers, government officials, councils and others to progress them — and to keep our members informed about what is changing.
More information:
- Find out more about the Hospitality Summit here.
- Read Minister Upston’s media release welcoming the Report: Industry roadmap to help hospitality succeed