Chinese visitors boost New Zealand tourism sector

A 25-percent leap in the number of visitors from China helped push up the number of overseas travelers arriving in New Zealand by 1 percent last month to 178,300, the government statistics agency announced Friday.

Chinese visitors numbered 14,400 last month, up by 2,900 from August last year, making it the highest number of Chinese travelers for an August month, according to Statistics New Zealand.

"More arrivals from Australia and China in August 2012 pushed visitor numbers even higher than in August 2011, when they were boosted by 4,400 arrivals for the Rugby World Cup," population statistics manager Andrea Blackburn said in a statement.

"This August, more people from Australia visited friends and relatives, while more arrived from China for holidays."

The rising number of visitors from China and Australia also helped boost the total visitor numbers in the year to the end of August by 5 percent to 2.636 million.

The 2012 yearly figure was boosted by the Rugby World Cup, while the 2011 numbers were affected by the Christchurch earthquake in February and disruption to air travel in June because of ash from Chile's Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano.

The annual rise in tourist numbers generated 50.5 million stay days, a 0.7-percent increase on the previous year, according to Tourism New Zealand.

"It is positive to see international arrivals continue to grow from two of our biggest markets, and even more positive that arrivals during August 2012 were ahead of August 2011, which were boosted by the start of arrivals for the Rugby World Cup," Tourism New Zealand chief executive Kevin Bowler said in a statement.

"The potential from Asia is clear, with most markets showing growth, including Hong Kong up 12.6 percent, Indonesia up 50 percent and India up 13 percent."

However, arrivals from the long-haul markets of the U.S. and UK continued to decline, with the U.S. down 5.4 percent and the UK down 26.4 percent for the month.

"While we expect the growth from Asia to offset the impact in total arrivals somewhat, this will have a major impact on some markets. In particular the traditional long staying Western markets, notably the UK and France," said Bowler.