Visitor slump bottoms out

By SIMON HENDERY

The terror attack-induced slump in the number of high-spending Japanese and American tourists visiting New Zealand is continuing.

But the tourism industry says the December visitor-arrival figures released yesterday suggest that the fallout from last September's attacks will be less severe than predicted.

Just under 240,000 short-term visitors arrived in December, down 3200 on the same month a year earlier.

Arrivals from our biggest market, Australia, were up 10 per cent for the year, but Japanese and US visitor numbers dropped 18 and 3.1 per cent respectively.

Visitors from those two countries stay longer and their average spending is more than three times that of Australians.

Elsewhere, arrivals from China were up 59 per cent and India 52 per cent, although those two markets comprise only 2 per cent of the month's visitors.

Tourism New Zealand chief executive George Hickton said the Government agency now expected overall visitor numbers for the peak October to March season to be down 3 or 4 per cent on last year. That was better than the 5 per cent drop a specially convened industry action group had predicted in October.

About 4.5 per cent fewer visitors arrived in the country in the three months to December, and that slump has cost the tourism industry an estimated $100 million in lost income.

But visitor arrivals for last year were up 6.9 per cent on 2000, and this summer was still likely to be the industry's second-busiest season ever, behind 2000-2001.

"Those [operators] who specialise in certain markets have been affected more than others but by and large, the industry has come through it very well," Mr Hickton said.

Operators had weathered the storm by keeping a tight rein on costs and being careful about credit control.

"New Zealand's tourism industry has probably come through this better than most countries," he said.

Australia hosted 4.8 million tourists, a drop of 2.6 per cent on the record-breaking Olympic Games year of 2000.

Mr Hickton said that although Japanese tourists had shied away from travel in significant numbers since the terror attacks, there had been encouraging signs in the past two weeks that they were returning to New Zealand.

Air New Zealand had reported stronger bookings from Japan following a joint marketing campaign with Tourism NZ and travel wholesalers.

A US advertising campaign in conjunction with the Australian Tourism Commission had just begun, but it was too early to judge its impact.

The chief executive of the Tourism Industry Association, which represents 3500 businesses and organisations, John Moriarty, said some operators who relied on the Japanese and American markets had laid off staff and cut costs.

Only one inbound operator had gone under, as far as he knew.

"On the scale of a $4.9 billion tourism industry, that is a very small downside."

The industry's Tourism Action Group, formed in September as a reaction to the US attacks, was mothballed after its final meeting last week.

Mr Moriarty said the group had fulfilled its main role of preventing rumours and misinformation from doing damage.