Early Easter Drives Record Australian Arrivals

The early Easter break has helped drive a record month for Australian visitor arrivals, with more Australians visiting New Zealand last month than any previous March on record.

Statistics New Zealand figures out today show there were 17,000 more Australian visitors to New Zealand in March 2010, compared with 2009, an increase of 19.8 per cent. This growth helped boost overall visitor arrivals for the month of March by 7.4 per cent compared with last year, to a total of 243,000 visitors.

Tourism New Zealand Chief Executive Kevin Bowler said this marked 12 months of strong growth out of Australia, with holiday arrivals up 26.2 per cent (100,000 visitors) for the year to date. However he noted that the full effect of Easter would not be seen until April figures were available.

"Australia has been our banker market for the past 12 months. High-profile marketing activity has helped keep awareness high, and good deals on travel combined with the favourable exchange rate are keeping interest in New Zealand strong. It is fantastic to see these factors positively impacting travel to New Zealand over Easter," he said.

"Feedback from the industry suggests we can expect more of the same from Australia for the coming months, with ski season bookings already tracking above last year.

"Joint-venture campaigns with the Regional Tourism Organisations have been underway since February and we are beginning to see early results from that activity."

Arrivals from New Zealand's second- and third-largest markets, the UK and US, remained sluggish with arrivals for both markets down (3.1 per cent and 5.6 per cent) compared with March 2009.

"Economic factors are continuing to impact travel to New Zealand from these markets. The situation in the UK in particular remains fragile and recent travel disruptions will not help arrivals for April," says Kevin Bowler.

"Although we are yet to see any real recovery in arrivals from the US, Tourism New Zealand and Air New Zealand are working together on a number of joint initiatives in market aimed at driving growth in arrivals in the medium to long term."

Arrivals from China were also down (15.6 per cent) in March. However, the other key Asian markets of Japan (down 0.6 per cent) and South Korea (up 43.5 per cent) are showing further signs of a return to growth after many months of decreasing visitor numbers.

"A new campaign has just been launched in China, and this should help recover some of the ground we've lost in arrivals recently."

International Visitor Arrivals March 2010:

For more information contact:
Sue Allen - 029 917 5466; suea@tnz.govt.nz