China's tourism lifeline – figures
Chinese visitors were worth more than half a billion dollars to the economy in the year to June.
New Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment figures show China is poised to become our second largest tourist market.
In the 12 months to June, visitor spending of $5.6 billion was flat, despite a 5% rise in the number of people visiting the country.
The ministry’s tourism, research and evaluation manager, Peter Ellis, says if it had not been for the rugby world cup there would have been a $200 million drop in total visitor spending.
But he says China remains the oustanding performer.
“Expenditure from Chinese visitors increased by 27% to $522 million. China is now our third-largest tourist market and just shy of the $568 million spent by visitors from the UK.
“China has already overtaken markets like Germany and the United States. It is now just a matter of time before it becomes our second-largest visitor market, behind Australia.”
The International Visitor Survey is based on interviews with 5200 tourists a year departing from New Zealand airports.
Back to home
Back to top
Print
Latest
NBR SERVICES
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Sign up for NBR subscriber content or email alerts
Comments and questions8
The fact is that the World Cup provided no booast to tourism spend in absolute terms. In fact the market appears to have gone backwards (if you take out China - who is no a big Rugby market). in real terms the numbers are even worse.
Maybe someone needs to ask if the fact the rugby world cup was on, was a negative for other tourists who stayed away.
As a tourism operator I believe your comment about the RWC may be valid. We found our bookings for self-drive visitors very low until immediately after RWC had finished and then it boomed. This year looks promising as we are already 50% above the same months last year. Our clientelle are the traditional Australian and European self-drive visitors.
I believe your tale is true. An associate is involved in the travel industry and the RWC was hyped to oblivion and those who gambled on that hype were lucky to walk away with only modest losses. The worst kept secret in Auckland at least was the real prices for accomodation a traveller could score during the event with just a few phone calls. The winners were those establishments that made block bookings to reputable companies regardless whether the beds werte slept in or not.
World Cups, the Olympics & Commonwealth Games do nothing but strike the egos of politicians & organising committees...
Costs are never recovered, while a very select portion of the business community benefit temporarily.
Buying up land and businesses as they travel too
Where has the data to support this come from?
Air NZ has reduced the number of seats out of China
China Southern Airlines has gone from 3 flights a week to daily flights. Air NZ has gone from 7 to 10 flights a week to 5 flights a week.
Air NZ - sad commentary on NZ as a nation. Others go forward while it goes backwards.Remember Air NZ used to fly daily to Singapore but now does not even fly to Singapore, KL, Bangkok or Jakarta! Meanwhile, SIA increased from daily flights to twice a day!
With the $nz continuing its relentless rise against the Euro and the Greenback, we need to not only encourage Chinese tourists to come, but we need them to spend up large on produce "made in NZ with NZ raw materials and labour"
Infant baby formula and plastic kiwis made in china will not be enough.