China is New Zealand's third-largest tourist market

China is on the verge of becoming New Zealand's second-largest tourist market in terms of visitor spending, according to New Zealand government figures out Tuesday.

While total spending by international visitors was flat at 5.6 billion NZ dollars (4.59 billion U.S. dollars) in the year ending June, Chinese visitors spent 27 percent more than the year to June 2011, according to the International Visitor Survey from the Minister of Business, Innovation and Employment.

The figures showed more people coming to New Zealand -- up 5 percent to 2.6 million in the 12 months ending June -- but spending less on average.

The ministry's tourism research and evaluation manager, Peter Ellis, said China was the "standout performer" over that period.

"In the past 12 months spending across traditional markets like the United Kingdom and United States has been flat. If it weren't for the Rugby World Cup in this period we would have seen a decrease in total visitor spend of well over 200 million NZ dollars," he said, referring to the international rugby tournament hosted by New Zealand in September and October last year.

"However, expenditure from Chinese visitors increased by 27 percent to 522 million NZ dollars. China is now our third-largest tourist market and just shy of the 568 million NZ dollars spent by visitors from the UK," Ellis said in a statement.

"China has already overtaken markets like Germany and the United States. It is now just a matter of time before China becomes our second-largest visitor market, behind Australia."

The International Visitor Survey is based on interviews of 5, 200 tourists a year departing from New Zealand airports.