Annual visitor arrivals up more than 1.2 million

Annual visitor arrivals up more than 1.2 million in five years – Media release

27 April 2018

A record 3.82 million visitors stepped onto New Zealand shores in the March 2018 year, Stats NZ said today. New Zealand has seen an increasing number of overseas visitors for the last five years, from 2.61 million in the March 2013 year. For the five years before 2013, there were around 2.5 million visitors a year.

Over the last five years the main sources of our visitors have been Australia, China, the United States, and the United Kingdom, in that order. In the March 2018 year, 39 percent of visitors came from one of our closest neighbours, Australia, followed by China (11 percent), the United States (9 percent), and the United Kingdom (7 percent).

For the March 2018 year, visitor arrivals by port were the following:
• Auckland airport had the majority (71 percent), with 2.72 million arrivals, up 189,700 from the March 2017 year.
• Christchurch airport had 554,700 arrivals, up 57,700.
• Queenstown airport had 272,400 arrivals, up 30,200.Wellington airport had 211,600 arrivals, down 3,800.
• Dunedin and other airports had 7,700 arrivals, up 400.All combined seaports had 43,100 arrivals, up 4,200.
In the March 2018 year, 1.5 million visitors from Australia arrived, up 89,100 from the March 2017 year. Of these, 39 percent were visiting friends and relatives and another 40 percent were here on holiday.

Most visitors from Australia came from its eastern seaboard:

• Sydney (562,700 visitors in the March 2018 year)
• Melbourne (407,400)
• Brisbane (303,700)
• Coolangatta (99,000).

There were 91,200 visitors from Australia’s other ports combined (eg Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, etc).

Accommodation survey: February 2018 showed that international guest nights were boosted by international guests visiting over Chinese New Year (which fell in mid-February in 2018). Accommodation survey: March 2018 (to be released on 10 May) will show where our international guests stayed in commercial accommodation in March.

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