Aussies cash in on cheap fares

The number of Australian tourists heading across the Tasman for the ski season is expected to jump. Photo / Sarah Ivey

The latest push to get more Australians crossing the Tasman for a holiday appears to be working, with internet booking site Wotif.com reporting a spike in accommodation bookings and up to 50 per cent growth for some regions.

Tourism New Zealand launched a two-week campaign at the end of April after receiving an extra funding boost of $2.5 million from the Government.

Tourism New Zealand Australian regional manager Barry Eddington said its Australian site had a 64 per cent increase in traffic in the week after the campaign was launched.

Its campaign was also matched by Air New Zealand offering $2 million in free domestic flights for visitors flying across the Tasman with them.

Eddington said that had spurred other airlines into making offers which had helped generate a much stronger run in bookings for the May and June period.

"My expectation is we will at least achieve last year's figures for May, which is a good result in this current environment."

Eddington said New Zealand was facing significant competition from the Australian domestic market, and particularly Queensland.

Australians could get from Melbourne or Sydney to Queensland for around A$150 to A$200 return where as it cost between A$240 to A$400 to get to New Zealand.

But the ongoing New Zealand campaign, which has run continuously since Boxing Day, was helping to keep New Zealand at the forefront of people's minds.

Eddington said he was expecting Australian ski visitors to be boosted by up to 25 per cent this year after an early-bird ski campaign had run in February. Normally around 70,000 Australians come to New Zealand to ski.

The campaign was also attempting to boost spending by Australians by highlighting New Zealand's luxury market.

Wotif.com spokeswoman Helen Thomas said it had received 31,000 visits to its promotion page during the two-week campaign.

"Throughout the promotion, we saw bookings increase in the larger cities like Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown, but we also saw other smaller regions such as Hamilton and Dunedin do well," she said.

Thomas said the campaign had seen a spike in bookings during the period and in some smaller regions bookings had grown more than 50 per cent.

But Air New Zealand was more coy about its benefits from the campaign.

Its group general manager international airlines, Ed Simms, said it was hard to pinpoint exactly what drove bookings over the April period as there had been both low airfares driven by capacity as well as the campaign.

"But there is no question that the April numbers would have been lower without having that stimulation in place."

Simms said the additional funding meant New Zealand could compete more strongly against other countries which were being forced to pull back their marketing.

But it was difficult to predict how the campaign would affect forward bookings.

"The forward booking cycle is hard to predict at any time and it is much much harder than it has ever been at the moment."