Visitors to city up 11pc on last year

Wangnaui City PHOTO/FILE

An increase in visitors to Wanganui has been termed "really encouraging" by Visit Whanganui's chairman and could signal a shifting trend.

The July figures from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) show visitor nights that month were 11 per cent ahead of the same month last year. And domestic traveller guest nights lifted by the same amount.

Dr Eric Dorfman, chairman of Visit Whanganui, said he was heartened to see the change.

"People in Wanganui are increasingly excellent proponents of their city and it's encouraging to see how the Wanganui breadth of experiences and attractions are beginning to reap rewards and, we hope, create the desire to return," Dr Dorfman said.

Lyn Cheyne, promotion and marketing manager, said with those domestic numbers lifting, international visitor stays were up 10 per cent.

Ms Cheyne said another pleasing aspect was the fact the time visitors were staying in Wanganui was working its way towards two nights on average and the overall occupancy rate rose as well.

"For the middle of winter, and potentially our slowest time of year, these are really encouraging results.

"While the percentage changes are not high we are definitely starting to see a slight rise and I'm really looking forward to the August and September figures to see if the trend is continuing," she said.

She said Visit Whanganui had promoted a winter campaign which it has been running in the lower North Island for the past three months, using radio advertising in Wellington, cinema advertising in selected theatres and a range of print advertising in targeted magazines and newspapers.

Ms Cheyne said it was too early to say if the campaign was driving the increased results but the organisation had noticed an increase in media requests for information, Wanganui images and more articles.

"Since May we've been producing regular stories and press releases for targeted news magazines and I believe this has certainly contributed to the increased interest.

"Visitors to the i-Site have also told us they've heard the radio advertising in Wellington," she said.

MBIE has recently released the NZ tourism sector outlook forecasts for 2014-2020 which showed long-term growth in visitor numbers and spending was positive.