Tourism Figures Reinforce Additional Funding

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
20 March 2009

Tourism Figures Reinforce Additional Funding

Figures out today showing a decline in visitor numbers reinforce a decision to invest more in the Australian tourism market.

Statistics New Zealand figures showed total arrivals for February were down 8.5% compared with the same month last year, with all New Zealand’s key markets on the decline, except Australia.

With some long-haul markets beginning to decline, Tourism New Zealand decided to move money into marketing Australia over the summer to bolster visitor numbers.

“The visitor arrival figures out today showing a 2.5% increase in the
number of Australian visitors reinforce the decision to work this market harder.”

Earlier this week Prime Minister and Minister of Tourism John Key announced an additional $2.5 million dollars for the Australian market to keeping pushing New Zealand’s message.

Australia is New Zealand’s biggest market generating nearly 40% of New Zealand’s arrivals and the Prime Minister said even small gains in demand will make a big difference.

Tourism New Zealand Chief Executive George Hickton says this meant that Tourism New Zealand would be able to continue marketing in Australia for longer than ever before.

“For the first time, Tourism New Zealand will be able to do work in Australia all through winter into the next summer. We brought forward our marketing spend to inject more into last summer’s campaign. This funding means we can keep up the momentum to stimulate travel.”

Markets like the US, Japan and Korea, traditionally dependent on the group bookings, all had major decreases in February.

“Anecdotally it seems that group bookings are the heaviest hit, with some operators reporting up to a 50% decrease,” he says. “However, in many cases this has been offset by increases in independent travellers and domestic travellers. The backpacker market is also holding up well.”

China’s numbers were down in February, however Mr Hickton says this could be accounted for by a shift in travel for the Chinese New Year holiday, which fell in January rather than February in 2009.

Other trends are seeing booking times continuing to get shorter and more people booking direct. “This is particularly common out of Australia,” says Mr Hickton, “but some operators are reporting that sometimes even our long-haul markets like the UK and Europe are booking activities very close to the time that they arrive.”

Tourism New Zealand has been running campaigns in four major markets: the US, UK, Australia and China, in an attempt to attract a larger market share of those that are still travelling.

International Visitor Arrivals February 2009:

• Australia 87,538 up 2.5%
• UK 42,481 down 15.1%
• USA 25,553 down 17.9%
• Canada 7,498 down 17.5%
• China 12,075 down 21.8 %
• Korea 5,060 down 28.6%
• Japan 9,890 down 14.3%

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