Trenz: Key is in longer stays, visitor spend

New Zealand's tourism sector needs to move its focus from arrival numbers to length of stay and visitor spend if it wants to make the most of the opportunities out there.

Tourism New Zealand chief executive Kevin Bowler, said yesterday at the Trenz tourism expo in Queenstown that the average quality of arrival was falling, indicating tourism had "quite a bit of work to do".

"Arrivals are growing at about 4 per cent, but what is really important is visitor days. These signal what is really important to the industry - value."

Visitor stay days had remained "pretty steady" at about 50 million since 2006/7.

Although he pointed to strong growth in arrivals out of Australia, China and Germany, he said this was not translating into growth in stay days. "And that's where the value comes in. Visitor stay days are very closely correlated to visitor spend and we can't underestimate how important that is.

"Our strategy for China is not just about more people arriving, but getting them to stay longer. That's the most important part of our proposal for New Zealand."

Bowler said China, Australia and the United States were the most important markets for the industry as Tourism New Zealand and others tried to balance capitalising on new growth markets, without losing traction in traditional, longer-stay markets.

"Australia is our largest and most important market. If we lost traction there, it would not be possible to catch up with other destinations."

He described China as a key focus and an exciting market and said Asia would become much more important in the next 10 years.

The US market was down slightly at the moment, but was expected to respond well to the release of the two Hobbit movies and corresponding DVD launches, which should flow throughinto 2014/5. "This is a really good opportunity for New Zealand. There are still businesses making money out of Lord of the Rings tours from 12 years ago.

"It is a strong brand and we can benefit from the lessons learned from Lord of the Rings."

Bowler said Tourism New Zealand was working with Warner Bros and Wingnut around shared use of the films' intellectual property to promote the film and New Zealand as a destination.