Here is the most physical fact in New Zealand's 4,000-visit cruise ambition. To reach it, Tauranga would have to run a cruise ship every single day for six consecutive months — on one berth.
How the model found it
We allocated a 4,000-visit scenario across 19 ports and 12 months, then checked every month against each port's published berth count. Tauranga has one cruise berth. In the allocation, six months — November through April — hit 100% berth occupancy: a ship arriving and leaving every day, with none of the days left empty.
Why that isn't a stretch target — it's impossible
One hundred per cent berth occupancy for six months leaves nothing for weather delays, maintenance, non-cruise vessels, or the turnaround time between one ship leaving and the next arriving. A berth that is full every day has no slack in it at all. That's not an ambitious number to push toward; it's a physical state the port cannot actually occupy.
And Tauranga isn't alone
The model flagged 20 port-months where the allocation exceeded physical berth-days and had to be capped: Auckland (2 berths) at both berths every day for four months; Lyttelton (1 berth) four months of continuous occupancy; Bay of Islands (tender-only) four months of daily tender operations. The strain clusters at a handful of single-berth ports in the four peak months.
The real finding
New Zealand's cruise constraint is not demand, not deployment, not even cost. In a high-volume scenario it is berths at four specific ports in four specific months. That is a capital-works problem with a lead time measured in years — which means it should be sequenced ahead of deployment advocacy, not run alongside it.
What actually gets you there
Build the berths already in prospect — Bledisloe North in Auckland, a second Tauranga berth, cruise access at Lyttelton's Te Awaparahi Bay, a second Bay of Islands tender pier — and flatten the season, and the model reaches 3,935. Neither move alone is enough; they unlock each other. You can walk through all 4,000 modelled calls and watch that single Tauranga berth fill, day after day. The full capacity analysis shows where every cap falls, and why the answer is concrete before it is marketing.