Industry chases US, Japan visitors

By SIMON HENDERY, Tourism writer

Tourism New Zealand says it will continue its marketing push into the lucrative US and Japanese markets despite latest visitor numbers showing a 20 per cent drop in arrivals from both countries.

The effects of the US terror attacks on international travel were borne out this week with last month's visitor arrival figures recording a decrease of 3.1 per cent on the same month last year - the first drop in numbers since September last year.

Last month 4593 fewer travellers arrived in the country compared with a year ago.

Japan and the US visitors were down by 19.5 and 19.6 per cent respectively, a loss of 5413 visitors.

Our biggest inbound market, Australia, was up 0.7 per cent, the UK was down 4.8 per cent and Germany down 4.6 per cent.

Tourism NZ's acting chief executive, Tim Hunter, said the numbers were in line with expectations and added weight to the organisation's forecast of a 5 per cent decrease for overall visitor arrivals to the end of February.

At the same time, arrivals from China and Korea were up 61.5 and 33.6 per cent respectively, and Mr Hunter said both were markets which held great potential.

Tourism NZ would continue campaigns in Japan and the US, the two markets which generated the highest per-visit spend from tourists.

"Tourism NZ can't sit on its hands while you have markets of that size and yield down so much," he said.

A joint $US1 million campaign with the Australian Tourism Commission and Air New Zealand, encouraging Americans to holiday in New Zealand and Australia, would begin in January.

This was not too late to have an effect on the vital summer tourism season, Mr Hunter said, because Americans often booked holidays in January for travel in February and March.

Meanwhile Sky City's general manager of sales, Kerry Rice, said the casino and hotel complex expected to maintain its room occupancy rates above 90 per cent in February and March, by shifting its marketing focus to growing Asian markets.

"We will continue to actively work in [the European and US] markets but while they are soft there is no point in putting all your eggs in those baskets," Mr Rice said.

"So while we continue to work on them for long-term business we also switch our focus to where we know we can get short-term business."

Mr Rice said that last March the company's central Auckland hotel was 97 per cent full and "I'm fairly confident of getting close to that [next year]. It may be a different market mix, but we will get it".