More visitors spending more in the Bay

Hawke's Bay Tourism general manager Annie Dundas welcomes the significant increase in visitor spending in the region. Photo / File

Visitors to the region are spending 25 per cent more with domestic tourists alone paying out $130 million more than the same period last year.

The Hawke's Bay Tourism's (HBT) Quarter1-2 (Q1-2) 2015-16 cites the Ministry of Business and Innovation's regional tourism dollar estimates at the year end March 2015, which also show a $10 million lift in the international tourist spend.

HBT general manager Annie Dundas puts this welcome financial spike to a strong economy.

"People are simply travelling more, the economy is strong and people are getting away and spending," she said. "All of our advertising efforts have focused on domestic visitors so we are thrilled to see this level of growth."

Ms Dundas said the $10 million increase in international visitor dollars was good growth.

"We are happy with our international spend increase," she said. "We rely heavily on the good work by Tourism New Zealand offshore to help grow this [as] we simply don't have the funds to be advertising in multiple international markets."

The Q1-2 further reports that at the year ending in March the total visitor spend for the region came in at $690,000,000. That makes Hawke's Bay the sixth busiest tourism region in New Zealand after Waikato, who pulled in $1,230,000,000 billion visitor dollars. The Q1-2 also reports a 5.7 drop in guest nights for the month of September 2015 over the same time last year.

"This equates to almost 3490 less nights spent in commercial accommodation in the region in September," the report reads/

Ms Dundas attributes this drop to the All Blacks test held at Napier's McLean Park.

"This saw a huge rise [in accommodation uptake] in 2014 so we were expecting this September result this year," she said. "Compared to 2013 we are up for the month of September. Commercial Accommodation year end September is plus 7.3 per cent."

She added that of the reported $130 million, $61 million of this was spent on commercial accommodation.

The Q1-2 also looks at the number of visitors who stayed in private accommodation for the month of September.

"An estimated 50,116 visitors to the Hawke's Bay region stayed 184,149 nights in private accommodation," it reads. "The major reason for visiting Hawke's Bay was visiting friends or family, 75.3 per cent of total nights stayed, and general holiday or leisure, 17.7 per cent.

"Visitors to the region stayed an average of 3.7 nights in private accommodation [while] international visitors stayed on average 1.9 times longer than domestic visitors, 6.0 nights compared to 3.2 nights respectively."

Looking to events, Summer F.A.W.C! was cited as HBT's standout success with the completion of the fourth series.

"Just fewer than 6000 tickets were sold," the Q1-2 reads.

"Ninety-three per cent of F.A.W.C! was sold out [and] between 35-40 per cent of people were form out of town."

Ms Dundas said beyond this event, HBT works with multiple events across the year and each has a different focus.

HBT will present its report to the Hawke's Bay Regional Council at today's meeting.

HBRC increased HBT's funding for the promotion of the region outside of Hawke's Bay.