Great Kiwi Invite Winners Announced

The winners of Tourism New Zealand's 'Great Kiwi Invite' campaign were announced on Friday, live on TVNZ's morning show Breakfast. The 15 winners hail from several of New Zealand's major tourism markets including the US, UK and Australia.

More than 80,000 Kiwis sent invitations to friends and family offshore as part of the campaign, which closed on Thursday morning.

The invitations reached all corners of the globe, with the largest numbers being sent to the UK, Australia, US, Europe, Canada and South Africa.

Close to 88,000 invitations were sent and just over 38,000 people accepted the invites and went in the draw to win one of 15 pairs of return flights to New Zealand with Air New Zealand.

Tourism New Zealand Chief Executive George Hickton says the response to the campaign exceeded expectations and boosted New Zealand's profile in a number of key markets.

"This campaign was designed to make the most of good old fashioned Kiwi hospitality and help boost visitor numbers during a challenging time for tourism. We are delighted with the number of New Zealanders who got behind the initiative."

Despite an overall drop in international visitor arrivals for the year to 31 July 2009, the 'visiting friends and relatives' sector remains resilient. More than 760,000 visitors travelled here to see friends and family in the past year, up 3.7 per cent.

"This shows that despite the economic situation, people will still travel to visit their friends and relatives," says George Hickton. "The personalised invites sent as part of the campaign should inspire a few more to book that trip to come down here and visit their loved ones in New Zealand."

Tourism New Zealand is contacting all winners to confirm acceptance of the prizes and will release further information about the winners and their 'Kiwi mates' as they become available.

Read more about 'The Great Kiwi Invite'

Winners of the prize draw and their 'Kiwi mates' are: