Parking in the Rotorua CBD
Please note: on-street parking is enforced 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday, and 9am to 12noon on Saturdays. Parking is free in the CBD on Public Holidays.
Rotorua Lakes Council currently operates a user-pays parking system in our inner city.
The parking tariff in our core CBD is $2 per hour (as of 1 July 2023), with free P60 parking on most of Tutanekai Street, and some adjoining streets. Select Pink Zones currently offer $0.50 per hour parking and these zones are intended for inner city workers. Other areas offer free time restricted parking, paid time restricted parking, all day paid parking and free all day parking. Free P15 parking spaces are also located throughout the inner city for quick stops. In addition, Council's Pukuatua Street parking building offers a covered,
off street alternative.
*Please note that further possible adjustments to parking areas are being explored with the intention of implementing any further changes in early September 2023.
How to pay for parking
Our parking system and enforcement services are managed on Council's behalf by our agent i-Park, who have supplied Pay-by-Plate' parking technology. This means you enter your vehicle's license plate into a nearby yellow parking machine, select and pay for the amount of time you'd like to park for, and then walk away. The system is paperless and you do not have to display a receipt on your dashboard. An information brochure about how to use the machines is available below.
Alternatively you can use the PrestoPark parking app to pay for your parking. The app offers another convenient way to pay for your parking, with notifications to alert you when your parking is about to expire. To download the app, simply type Prestopark Rotorua into your web browser and follow the instructions.
Infringement notices
Rotorua's parking policy, which includes the setting of all parking fees (e.g. hourly rate), remains with Council. Infringement (parking tickets) fees are set by Central Government, not Council or i-Park.
An easy to use online i-Park portal is available to assist with paying or disputing infringement notices (tickets), finding information if you have lost your infringement, checking on the process status of an infringement along with providing a contact number for assistance (from a mobile device). Learn more about this here
Contacting i-Park
Call the i-Park Parking Hotline 07 958 9805 to report illegal parking or for any other parking related questions. Please note that we cannot discuss infringement disputes and we will not be able to continue calls of this nature. All contact regarding infringement disputes must be via the appeals process.
Where to park
A map showing where our free P60 parks are, where our parking building is located and where the payment machines are located is also available below. Visit our Where to Park page to find out more.
The CBD is primarily split into a Green Zone and a Blue Zone (also shown in map below). In these zones are a mixture of free and paid parking options. If parking in the Green zone, you can pay once and move around within the Green zone until the time you have paid for runs out. The same applies to the Blue Zone. In all areas, you must still abide by any time restrictions stated on parking signs. Select Pink Zones offer $0.50 per hour parking and these zones are intended for inner city workers.
How to use the parking machines
View a larger version of the map here
Why did parking fees increase?
Increases to fees and charges were proposed in the 2023/24 draft Annual Plan which went out for community consultation in April/May 2023.
Like most businesses, Council faces increased costs to deliver its services and fees have not kept pace with this. Increasing fees and charges in line with inflation helps to reduce the reliance on rates funding to pay for the services that Council provides to the community. This means that the costs of some services are moved towards those who benefit from and generate the need for those services (i.e. user pays as opposed to ratepayer funded).
The 2023/24 Annual Plan was adopted by Councillors on 28 June 2023 and this included the decision to increase fees and charges.
For more information about Annual Plan decisions and which fees and charges are increasing, visit www.rotorualakescouncil.nz/apfeesandcharges
