Lions rugby fans give NZ tourism big boost

Lions fans helped bring a surge of overseas visitors into the country last month. Photo / Chris Loufte

Cheering British and Irish Lions fans helped bring a surge of overseas visitors into the country last month, while net migration also reached a record high.

With the Lions touring to play the All Blacks, 23,400 UK and Irish visitors flocked into the country in June, up from 16,700 in the same month last year.

It was the second highest month for visitors from the two countries in New Zealand's history, Stats NZ population statistics senior manager Peter Dolan said.

"The highest was in June 2005 when arrivals reached 28,200, which also coincided with [a] British and Irish Lions tour to New Zealand," he said.

The boost pushed total overseas visitor arrivals in June 2017 to 230,100, up by 17 per cent, or an extra 33,900 compared to June 2016.

Annual net migration also hit a record high of 72,300 in the year ended June 2017, Stats NZ said.

This was 3200 higher than net migration a year earlier.

It came as a record 131,400 migrants arrived in New Zealand in the past year, while 59,100 left the country.

Mr Dolan said net migration had been steadily increasing since 2012 and was consistently hitting record levels in the past three years,

The biggest increases came from the UK with 2600 more migrants arriving than leaving and South Africa with 1800 more arrivals.

The largest drop came from India where 7400 migrants arrived in the past year compared with 12,100 a year earlier due to a drop in student arrivals, Stats NZ said.