New Zealand rewards the booked ahead.
Which Milford day gets you the fiord instead of a coach window. Whether Hobbiton earns the drive. What a jet boat actually costs. Every tour in New Zealand, reviewed.
The days New Zealand is famous for.
A fiord at the end of a mountain road, a film set kept exactly as it was built, a cave roofed with living light, a haka before dinner, a boat that spins on a river. Most New Zealand trips get built around a handful of these.
North to south, the way most first trips run.
Queenstown sells adrenaline by the half-day.
Commercial bungy jumping was invented forty minutes from the town centre and Queenstown never got over it. Jet boats into the Shotover canyons, skydives over Lake Wakatipu, and a gondola for everyone who would rather watch from a chair.
New Zealand’s most popular tours.
Every review →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the country, and what makes each one worth its day.
1
Hobbiton Movie Set: Guided Tour Ticket
Official Hobbiton Movie Set guided tour near Matamata, 150 minutes on the 12-acre set with a Green Dragon Inn included drink.
From · $71
Read our review →
2
Glowworm Caves Guided Tour by Boat
from $48
3
Rotorua Canopy Tours: 2.5Hour Native Forest Zipline Adventure
from $123
4
Hobbiton™ Movie Set Walking Tour from Shires Rest
from $74
5
Mitai Maori Village: Cultural Experience and Dinner Buffet
from $101
6
Whale Watching Cruise
from $104
7
Cruise Milford NZ Small Boutique Cruise Experience
from $111
8
Whale Watching in Kaikoura by Boat
from $111
Milford Sound: pick how you get there.
All 62 Milford Sound tours →
The fiord sits four hours from Queenstown down a road that is half the reason to go. Coach and cruise is the classic; flying halves the day and doubles the price; starting from Te Anau buys you a lie-in. These three carry the most travellers.
Coach down the Milford Road, cruise, coach back
Mirror Lakes before the wind gets up, the Homer Tunnel bored straight through the divide, and a walk into the Chasm while the driver makes the coffee.
Two hours under Mitre Peak
Bowen and Stirling Falls close enough to soak the front deck, fur seals on the rocks at Copper Point, and walls that keep climbing after you stop looking up.
Fly in, cruise, fly out
Over the Southern Alps and the Sutherland Falls on the way in, back over Lake Wakatipu before dinner. Fiordland weather cancels these, so leave a spare day.
Rotorua steams, and you get used to the smell in an hour.
The town sits on a live geothermal field: silica terraces the colour of a swimming pool, mud that plops all afternoon, and the country’s deepest Māori cultural programme built around it. Book the evening ones first.
What a New Zealand day costs.
Every tour on the site, sorted by what it actually costs. The country has a reputation for expensive, and half of it is wrong.
Tram tickets, cable cars, geothermal parks and the Waitomo boat — the everyday best of the country.
The full days: fiord cruises, whale boats, jet boats, and dinner at a Māori village.
Helicopters onto glaciers, fly-cruise-fly to Milford, the alpine trains and the once-a-trip jumps.
Only in New Zealand.
Beaches and vineyards belong to plenty of countries. A cave lit by insect larvae, a film set the farmer kept, and a boat built to run in ten centimetres of water do not.
The Glowworm Caves
Arachnocampa luminosa lives nowhere else on earth. The larvae hang fishing lines of silk from a cave roof and glow blue to draw insects onto them, and a boatload of people drifting underneath in total silence is the whole experience. Waitomo runs the famous one; Te Anau’s is reached across a lake and is usually quieter.
- 1Glowworm Caves Guided Tour by Boat★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 4,908 reviews
- 2Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Guided Day Trip from Auckland incl lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,677 reviews
- 3Glowworm Caves Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,611 reviews
The Hobbiton Movie Set
The second time the set went up it was built in permanent materials, and the Alexander family have farmed around it ever since. Forty-four hobbit holes, a gardener keeping the vegetable plots honest, and a pint at the Green Dragon at the end. Sheep still graze the paddocks either side.
- 1Hobbiton Movie Set: Guided Tour Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 8,167 reviews
- 2Hobbiton™ Movie Set Walking Tour from Shires Rest★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,577 reviews
- 3Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Guided Day Trip from Auckland incl lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,677 reviews
The Jet Boat
Bill Hamilton built the first workable jet boat in Canterbury in the 1950s to get up rivers too shallow for a propeller. The tourist version keeps the engineering and adds canyon walls at arm’s length and a 360-degree spin the driver will not warn you about.
- 1Shotover River Extreme Jet Boat Ride in Queenstown★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,540 reviews
- 2Shotover River and Kawarau River Jet Boat Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,682 reviews
- 3Waikato River Jet Boat Ride from Taupo★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,441 reviews
Book these before you fly to New Zealand.
Most of the country can be booked from your accommodation the night before. These cannot — they run on single daily departures, small boats and a summer that everyone else has also booked.
- 01Hobbiton Movie Set: Guided Tour TicketTimed entry in fixed group sizes, and the summer slots are gone weeks out.
- 02Premium Milford Sound Small Group Tour & Cruise from QueenstownOne long day from Queenstown with a fixed departure — miss it and the next is tomorrow.
- 03Whale Watching CruiseKaikoura sails on the weather. Book early in your stay so a cancelled day still has a spare.
- 04TranzAlpine Train, Arthur’s Pass and Castle Hill Day TripOne train each way per day across the Alps, and the carriages are not large.
Auckland is a harbour with a city attached.
A third of the country lives here, on an isthmus between two harbours with fifty-odd volcanic cones pushing up through the suburbs. The good days get you onto the water or onto the ferry to Waiheke, and the great day trips leave south towards Hobbiton and Waitomo.
- 1Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Guided Day Trip from Auckland incl lunchfrom $229
- 2Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Day Trip with Lunchfrom $221
- 3Auckland Dolphin and Whale Watching Eco-Safari Cruisefrom $135
New Zealand’s best hours are the ones without a sun.
All glowworm tours →
Four seasons in one day is not a joke here.
A West Coast morning can deliver sun, hail and a rainbow before lunch, and Fiordland gets seven metres of rain a year. None of this needs to wreck a day: the caves, the hot pools and the cultural evenings are all better wet, and the waterfalls only improve.
By region — north island to south
Auckland92 tours
Rotorua59 tours
Wellington34 tours
Christchurch53 tours
Queenstown124 tours
Milford Sound & Fiordland44 tours
Bay of Islands25 tours- All 24 regions →
By experience — water, ice, forest or steam
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