More visitors come to stay in city beds

Dave Hill

Workers in the city to help build two major retail projects in Wanganui has been given as a reason for a healthy increase in visitor numbers.

For the first time in at least two years tourism guest nights and accommodation has grown for two consecutive months.

Dave Hill, chairman of Destination Whanganui Providers, said after a good April result, May was also a successful month.

Mr Hill said guest nights have grown 30.5 per cent - to 12,218 - 3000 up on May of last year.

He said the industry would be encouraged by these figures and hopefully it indicated the five years of tourism decline in Wanganui had bottomed out and the city would now experience a much-needed growth in visitor numbers.

"Especially encouraging is the 45.3 per cent growth in domestic visitors, which helped offset the 19.3 per cent fall in international visitors. The average length of stay was also up from 1.39 nights to 1.73 nights while motel occupancy rates were up to 44.2 per cent," he said.

Mr Hill could not attribute the growth to any one factor, such as a one-off event or any major marketing, but he said that was positive because it indicated New Zealanders "are finally putting behind them the years of negative publicity that Wanganui has generated".

"One factor contributing to growth is an increase in professionals and tradespeople associated with the big retail building projects taking place in the city.

"This endorses just how positive the impact that business, construction and population growth has on our city."

However, he said although the growth was very welcome, it was tempered by the fact that for years Wanganui has been one of the country's worst-performing tourism areas.

"For example, May's guest night figures overall are the third lowest in volume out of the 33 regional tourism areas, and some of these regions are much smaller than Wanganui in size and population," he said.

Mr Hill said looking ahead there was an expectation that the city would see continued growth with a visitor marketing campaign targeting Wellington, Hawke's Bay and Taranaki started this month and which will continue for three months.

He said hopefully the "Take A Fresh New Look at Wanganui" theme of the campaign will influence people's decisions on where to visit this spring and summer.