North 'needs' more year-around events

NOT ENOUGH: Northland is seen as needing more than just its natural beauty, such as Ninety Mile Beach, to attract more visitors over winter.PHOTO/FILE

Northland needs to develop more year-round visitor experiences to address its low tourist season, says a regional promotions manager.

Northland guest nights were fairly steady this July compared with the previous July, up just 0.5 per cent to 75,000 on Statistics New Zealand figures - and Paul Davis, Northland Inc general manager regional promotions, said it had one of the country's highest visitation seasonality curves.

He said that was mainly due to its reputation as a summer holiday destination and the experiences on offer, including beaches and water-based activities.

Northland's mid-winter guest night performance was always lower than regions that offered less climate-dependent experiences.

There had been promotion of Northland in the off-season to address that seasonality.

The Bay of Islands Marketing Group and the Whangarei District Council ran specific winter promotional campaigns this year targeting off-season travel to their respective areas but Mr Davis said promotion alone wouldn't change the seasonal issues the tourism sector faced.

Northland needed to develop more year-round visitor experiences for those issues to be remedied.

Northland Inc was helping with the development of a wider range of visitor experiences that were not so weather dependent. Those included the Hundertwasser Centre, Ngawha Springs redevelopment, the Twin Coast Cycle Trail and Waitangi Mountain Bike Park.

"The development of the Waitangi National Museum is another key plank in Northland's increasing offer of year-round experiences," said Mr Davis.

He said the July guest nights were simply a low-season snapshot and didn't give a complete picture. He also noted there was a big increase in guest nights in July 2014, which the most recent figures were being compared to.

He said Northland's annual growth rate for the year ended July 2015 was 6.6 per cent, ahead of the national growth rate of 5.4 per cent.

An additional 108,052 nights were spent in Northland in the year to July.

International visitor arrivals to New Zealand were currently at an all-time high as was visitor expenditure. That was expected to continue and most regions were benefiting. A guest night refers to one guest spending one night in a hotel, motel, backpacker establishment or holiday park.