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Overseas visitors at record for January month

The number of overseas visitors arriving for short term stays in January reached record levels for the month, as visitor numbers from Australia continued at high levels.Statistics New Zealand said today 256,700 visitors arrived in January, up 5 percent fr

NZPA
Mon, 01 Mar 2010

The number of overseas visitors arriving for short term stays in January reached record levels for the month, as visitor numbers from Australia continued at high levels.

Statistics New Zealand said today 256,700 visitors arrived in January, up 5 percent from a year earlier, and above the previous January high of 253,500 in 2008.

Visitor arrivals had risen in eight of the past 10 months, compared with the same months a year earlier, SNZ said.

Visitor arrivals from Australia rose 13,000 or 16 percent in January, compared to a year earlier, continuing large monthly rises that started last April.

Visitor arrivals from Korea were up 1900 or 30 percent, while those from Japan rose 1200 or 16 percent.

It was the first time since September 2007 that visitor arrivals from Japan had improved, when compared with the same month of the previous year, but numbers from Japan were still only almost half the peak of 16,000 in January 2005, SNZ said.

Visitors from China were down 4800 or 34 percent, affected by the timing of Chinese New Year.

The 2.47 million arrivals in the January 2010 year was up 22,000 on the January 2009 year, and similar to that for January 2008.

The number of visitors from Australia rose 12 percent, or 117,700, to 1.1m for the year, while those from Britain were down 22,400 or 8 percent, visitors from Japan were down 20,300 or 20 percent, from Korea they were down 19,700 or 26 percent, and from China down 18,400 or 16 percent.

Visitor numbers from Australia had more than doubled since the January 2000 year, while the 79,600 from Japan was less than half the annual high of 174,800 recorded in the January 2003 year, SNZ said.

During January, New Zealand residents left on 106,800 short term overseas trips, up 1700 or 2 percent from January 2009. For the year to January the number of departures dropped 2 percent to 1.92m.

NZPA
Mon, 01 Mar 2010
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Overseas visitors at record for January month
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