Boosting tourism from China more than visas, Luxon says

Wednesday, 18 June 2025

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was at the office of Chinese travel agent Trip.com in Shanghai on Wednesday for the signing of an agreement with Tourism New Zealand, as he seeks to boost New Zealand's tourism profile in the Chinese market.

SHANGHAI | First stop, boosting tourism. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon began an export-focused visit to Shanghai on Wednesday with a visit to Trip.com, China’s largest online travel agency.

But immediately the challenge New Zealand faced in rebuilding sluggish Chinese tourists numbers was apparent.

Standing within a room with Trip.com data, maps and graphs projected across the walls ‒ giving the appearance of the movie Minority Report crossed with Chinese tourism ‒ there were encouraging signs.

The firm had recorded a year-on-year growth of visits to New Zealand of 40.5% in the past 30 days. Spending, in the same timeframe, was apparently up 34.3%.

But as an outbound destination, New Zealand was ranked 29th, well below China’s geopolitical rival the United States, at ninth.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon with Trip.com chief executive Jane Sun, and vice president Edison Chen, and Tourism Minister Louise Upston watching a presentation at Trip.com

Stats NZ data shows that in the year to March 2025, there were 248,000 New Zealand visitors to China, an increase of 38,000 on the year prior, but still well short of the 434,000 at the same time in 2019.

Luxon, speaking to reporters, said the challenge for New Zealand was marketing and awareness, getting more of China’s 500 million-strong middle class to “choose New Zealand over Costa Rica, over Ireland, over Thailand.

“We're here is also to lift share of mind around all things New Zealand while we're here [over] the course of this week,” he said.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon with Trip.com chief executive Jane Sun, and vice president Edison Chen, accompanied by Tourism Minister Louise Upston and a business delegation including Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran and Auckland and Christchurch airport chiefs.

To this end, Tourism New Zealand signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Trip.com, which Luxon said would mean collaboration between the two on marketing campaigns. The Trip.com MoU was not a new idea ‒ similar agreements were signed in 2018 and 2023.

Luxon also assisted the effort by filming a video for Trip.com while at its offices.

But other measures could be taken, according to Trip.com chief executive Jane Sun and vice president Edison Chen, who toured Luxon through the numbers.

While the Government announced before arrival in Shanghai visa-waivers for Chinese travellers who already have valid Australian visas, a tweak hoped to ease access to New Zealand, Chen suggested a full visa-waiver for travellers ‒ as China offered New Zealand last year ‒ would be good.

Sun pitched a 10-year visa for premium tourists.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on his first day in Shanghai with a business delegation.

“We won’t be doing that today,” Luxon said, afterwards.

He said the immigration settings were appropriate.

At another Fonterra event in the city, wine glasses of milk were raised to celebrate a new grass-fed milk standard created by New Zealand to help promote dairy in China.

“What's going to drive our lift and tourism numbers is not our visa settings. It's frankly going to be our relative competitiveness and the attraction of New Zealand to Chinese consumers.”

Nonetheless, later in the day, Tourism Minister Louise Upston, accompanying Luxon on the trip, and Immigration Minister Erica Stanford announced the Government would remove the need for Chinese passport holders to obtain a transit visa ‒ meaning a four-day application costing $235 to pass through Auckland would become a 24-hour process for $17.

Turning Auckland Airport into a transit hub toward South America would not exactly improve inbound tourism, but it would increase the flow of travellers flying from China into New Zealand and beyond, which Upston said would “help to lower the cost of a plane ticket, which makes it cheaper for other waves of tourists to come and see what our country has to offer”.

“More capacity from airlines will make it easier to visit New Zealand and adds cargo capacity, driving economic growth and supporting the Government’s goal to double the value of tourism exports by 2034.”

Wayne Brown, who has championed the idea as Auckland mayor, welcomed the move, which the Government had previously dismissed.

“I’m please to see that wiser heads in Government have prevailed,” he said, in a statement.

Beyond tourism, Luxon and the business delegation promoted a series of agreements and trade initiatives in a whirlwind of events, shuttling between hotels and other venues in a motorcade.

One such initiative, the creation of a new cosmetics manufacturing standard that meets Chinese regulatory requirements, was touted as potentially opening up a $200 million market of retail sales.

Another event for Fonterra celebrated the creation of a “grass-fed” standard for milk, a government-industry initiative to create new branding for dairy products aimed at appealing to Chinese consumers.

Luxon made brief remarks at the event, as wine glasses of milk were handed around the audience.