Hospitality Sector Review

The Hospitality Review covers regulation that applies to the hospitality sector; restaurants, bars, cafes, food stalls, food trucks, catering businesses, and hotels.  

The New Zealand’s hospitality sector is a $15.7 billion industry that employs over 145,000 people.

The sector has told Government that it is hurting. They say that outdated, overlapping and confusing rules are holding back growth, on the back of substantial challenges over the past five years, starting with Covid.

The Hospitality Review 

The Ministry for Regulation’s Hospitality Review will find the problems with hospitality regulation, and make recommendations to cut red tape, keep costs down, manage risks, and make compliance easier. 

We will assess whether the rules are: 

• necessary and worth the cost
• effective, efficient, and proportionate to the risks 
• adaptable and can evolve over time 
• easy to comply with, and 
• aligned with good regulatory practice. 

Scope

This review will look at regulation that applies to restaurants, bars, cafes, food stalls at markets, food trucks, catering businesses, and hotels. Gambling regulation is out of scope.

See the full Terms of Reference. (257 KB, Pdf)

Have your say

We want to hear from hospitality business owners, workers, regulators, and representative groups in the hospitality sector. The information you give us will inform the Review’s priorities and recommendations.

We’ve put together a resource that might be helpful as you prepare your submission. (415 KB, Pdf)

To make a submission on the Review please select the link below that applies to you to take part.

• Hospitality business ownersopen_in_newopen_in_new
• Hospitality workersopen_in_new
• Organisations who represent hospitality businessesopen_in_new 
• Interested partiesopen_in_new
• Hospitality regulatorsopen_in_new 

Submissions close at 23:59 on 12 November 2025

Timeframes 

We will deliver a final report to Ministers for consideration by April 2026.