NZ travellers thrash the plastic

By GREG ANSLEY in Canberra

Forget the Christmas credit card hangover.

A new study of Visa card spending in Australia shows that New Zealanders' trips across the Tasman leave them with a whopping hole in their collective pocket that has made them No 3 among foreign plastic shoppers.

The analysis, made for Visa International by Network Economics Consulting Group, does not give a figure for the total run up on New Zealand cards.

But it does show that in 2002-03 the amount they spent using Visa rose A$29.3 million ($33.8 million), placing them behind only British and American tourists.

And the study says that for the past decade New Zealanders have consistently been among the top five Visa credit-card spenders in Australia, along with visitors from Britain, the US, Japan and Hong Kong.

Between them, their cards accounted for 65 per cent of all Visa spending.

Adding Singaporeans, Canadians, South Koreans, Norwegians and Germans, the top 10 Visa-using nationalities ran up total bills of A$4.28 billion in 2002-03, up A$914 million in just three years.

New Zealanders - whose ranking as big spenders is underwritten by the sheer weight of numbers crossing the Ditch - have an added value for Australians.

Their spending helps, at least in part, to even out the seasonal troughs in tourist flows from the other major markets. As numbers from Britain and the US fall, the flow from New Zealand peaks.

Credit cards play a major partin their spending.

The study says the 4.3 million foreigners who visited Australia in 2002-03 spent a total of A$10.96 billion, equivalent to 1.5 per cent of the nation's gross domestic product.

About 43 per cent of this was run up on Visa cards.

The study also identifies emerging new players and points to the sectors of the Australian economy benefiting most from their Visa spending.

Top among them are Chinese visitors, whose Visa spending hit A$90 million in 2003-04, with year-on-year growth reaching up to 142 per cent.

This has been driven by double-digit growth in visitor numbers over the past four years.

Others moving fast up the rankings are Latvia, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Vietnam and the Russian Federation.

Their Visa spending went mainly to retail goods and services - most notably the A$26.6 million spent at duty-free stores - education, restaurants and fast food, and professional and commercial services.

But the study highlights the blows delivered by terrorism and the Sars epidemic, which hit visitor numbers and spending from both Southeast Asia and North America.

Although it says spending by Southeast Asians is starting to recover, their Visa bills fell 12 per cent to A$375 million in 2002-03.

Spending by North Americans fell to A$1.13 billion from a Sydney Olympics-year peak of A$1.2 billion in 2000, with most of the decline resulting from a slide in United States visitors.

The study said terrorism and Sars had significantly affected Americans' willingness to travel.