Japan charters to Auckland to treble over summer

Japan charters to Auckland to treble over the summer

Auckland Airport welcomes the timely boost provided to the recovering Japan inbound tourism market through the efforts of Air New Zealand, in partnership with Auckland Airport and Tourism New Zealand.

Auckland Airport general manager aeronautical business development, Glenn Wedlock, said “The success of this Air New Zealand charter initiative has been striking and proves that through an innovative industry partnership approach New Zealand tourism can generate more growth out of an important high-value market. We believe Japan still has significant untapped potential.”

Air New Zealand has more than tripled the number of charter flights it will be operating from Japan to New Zealand this summer, in response to a resurgence in demand from this high spending tourism market. Between 26 December 2010 and 3 April 2011, Air New Zealand will operate 14 return charter flights to Auckland from nine departure points across Japan.

Mr Wedlock said, “Data for the year ended June 2010 indicates that 80% of all Japanese holiday makers to New Zealand were first-time visitors. So it is very important that as a collective industry we continue to develop this market and give Japanese travellers new reasons to consider coming to New Zealand.”

The charter flights will utilise 230 seat Boeing 767 aircraft potentially bringing more than 3,000 additional Japanese visitors to New Zealand over the popular summer season.

“Given we receive only receive about 0.5% of the total Japanese outbound market, or just over 1% of the 7.5 million travellers who travel long-haul to Europe, US, Australia, Canada and NZ there is a significant opportunity for New Zealand to develop an even greater share of the market. With many carriers being forced to make tough decisions about routes, it is fantastic to see the development of capacity from Air New Zealand into Japan and the subsequent growing of Japanese passenger traffic to New Zealand”, said Mr Wedlock.

“This sort of market development work is vitally important for the industry as the key markets that are vital to New Zealand’s tourism sector continue to emerge from the global downturn”.

ENDS

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