Chinese New Year not so happy for New Zealand tourism

Friday, 12 April 2019

For the year to February 436,700 Chinese visitors came to New Zealand, slightly up on the previous year, but visitation over Chinese New Year was down.

Chinese visitor numbers took a dive in February, largely due to fewer arrivals during Chinese New Year.

Latest figures from Statistics NZ show the number of arrivals from China was 50,900 in February, down 26 per cent on the previous year when New Zealand welcomed a record 68,900 Chinese.

The lower numbers were partially offset by increases from Korea, Australia and Taiwan.

Tourism New Zealand chief executive Stephen England-Hall said globally the tourism market was expected to soften this year, and the Chinese market was notoriously volatile.

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'It has gone from double digit growth rates to negative growth, and bounced back to single digit, all in a 12-month period.

'A significant decline in Chinese arrivals would be a concern for New Zealand - whether it's a sustained drop or periodic, it's too early to tell.'

England-Hall said there could be a number of reasons for the summer drop in Chinese visitors

'Outbound travel from China is down, there's more competition from other destinations, increased pressure on domestic spending among Chinese as their domestic economy is slowing down.

'So they are looking for value for money, or maybe they want a shorter holiday, or they want their trip to New Zealand to be the trip of a lifetime and are thinking that maybe now is not the time.'

England -Hall said TNZ would be taking a closer look at trends to decide on future marketing across all the countries it targeted.

He said it was more useful to look at annual trends which showed total visitor arrivals stable at 3.8 million, up 102,524.

However, there had been notable falls in visitors from the UK (down 15,377) and Europe (down 17,669) for the year ended February.

Brexit was likely to have an impact - 'domestic uncertainty will always affect outbound behaviour' - but it was hard to know how significant it would be now that Brexit had been delayed until October, England-Hall said.