Visa card study reveals what tourists are piling on the plastic

Shotover Jet has been a popular tourist attraction near Queenstown for many years. Photo / Mike Scott

A report by Visa shows tourists spent $2.88 billion on their cards last year - up 12 per cent on the previous 12 months.

Figures released today at the Auckland Airport travel summit showed overall transactions were up by 23 per cent year-on-year.

Visitors from Australia, the US, China, the UK and Germany spent the most in New Zealand via Visa in 2016, with the US, South Korea, Japan and Germany delivering the greatest growth in spend. Only the UK, out of the top 10 markets, showed a decline in total spend in 2016 compared with 2015.

Several emerging markets outside of the top 10, such as Argentina, the Philippines and Ukraine saw an increase in spend of more than 50 per cent.

Visa's Country Manager for New Zealand and South Pacific, Marty Kerr, said data showed just how strongly New Zealand is performing overall as a destination market for international visitors.

"What we found most notable is that out of the top 10 nationalities coming to New Zealand - which represent 84 per cent of all Visa spend by visitors to this country - New Zealand improved its spend ranking across six of those inbound markets between 2015 and 2016," said Kerr.

Visa transactions made by visitors rose from 14.8 million to just over 18.1 million.

"It's pleasing to see New Zealand outperforming our Australian counterparts in more than half of the top nine markets by transaction volume. Overall, the inbound markets contributing the most to the increase in transactions were the US, China, Japan and Germany, each growing by more than 25 per cent," said Kerr.

The report also shows Visa cardholders from South Korea, Singapore and China spent considerably more on average per transaction in New Zealand, and in some cases more than double that of visitors from Japan, Canada and the US, suggesting these markets represent a potentially higher-value visitor.

South Koreans spent $165 per transaction, Singaporeans $147 and Chinese $145. Germans spent least per transaction at $69.

South Koreans spent higher than average on food and groceries and in hardware stores. Chinese spent heavily on shopping and retail.

The categories experiencing the greatest increase in tourist spend were restaurants, food and grocery, fuel and transport, and travel services, all increasing by more than 15 per cent compared to 2015.

The growth in inbound spend reflected not only a rise in numbers of visitors to New Zealand in the past year, but also the more prominent use of multiple forms of electronic payments, said Kerr. Use of Visa payWave by visitors grew by 116 per cent in 2016 and online and other non-face-to-face transactions grew by 17.5 per cent.