Record numbers of Chinese visitors fuel NZ tourism boom

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Record numbers of Chinese are visiting New Zealand, mostly to holiday, reinforcing predictions the Chinese market will fuel a boom in the tourism industry.

Visitors from China numbered 31,000 last month, the highest-ever for April, Statistics New Zealand said on Thursday.

Annual visitor arrivals from China exceeded 300,000 for the first time in April, making China New Zealand’s second-biggest source country for visitors, after Australia.

The 302,100 visitor arrivals from China in the April year were up 26 percent from the previous year.

Most of this increase was holidaymakers, Statistics NZ said.

The data is the latest evidence of a boom for the tourism industry after the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment earlier this week predicted visitor spending will skyrocket by 48 percent to $11.1 billion by 2021.

Michael Bird, the ministry’s general manager institutions and system performance, says Chinese visitors are staying longer, visiting more regions, doing a greater range of activities and spending more.

He predicts China will surpass Australia as New Zealand’s biggest-spending tourist market in the next seven years.

Statistics NZ said 2.96 million people visited New Zealand in the April 2015 year. This is the highest-ever annual total and is up seven per cent from a year-earlier.

There were 238,000 overseas visitors last month, a record-high for April.

A decrease in visitors from the UK was mainly due to the earlier timing of Easter and school holidays this year. But the number of visitors from the US, at 16,900, was the highest for April since 2007, just before the global financial crisis.

Statistics NZ also released migration data that showed New Zealand had a seasonally adjusted net gain of 4,700 migrants in April.

New Zealand had a net inflow of 100 migrants from Australia in April, the first month New Zealand has had a net gain from Australia since 1991.