Visitor Arrivals Up 17 Per Cent

External Migration: August 2001

There were 136,900 overseas visitor arrivals in New Zealand in August 2001, an increase of 19,500 or 17 per cent on August 2000, according to Statistics New Zealand. The major contributors to this increase were Australia (up 9,600), Asia (up 5,200), the Americas (up 1,300) and Europe (up 900).

For the year ended August 2001, there were 1.918 million visitors, up 192,000 or 11 per cent on the previous August year. Five of our seven largest source countries contributed three-quarters of this increase: Australia (up 71,100 or 13 per cent), the United Kingdom (up 25,600 or 14 per cent), Korea (up 16,100 or 25 per cent), China (up 16,000 or 52 per cent) and Japan (up 13,700 or 9 per cent).

In the August 2001 year, 1.008 million short-term visitors came to New Zealand for a holiday ? the first time that the one million level has been reached. Almost one-quarter of the holidaymakers came from Australia (238,600), followed by Japan (137,300), the United States (124,100) and the United Kingdom (108,900). The average length of stay for holidaymakers in 2001 was 17 days, a week shorter than visitors who came for other purposes. With a median age of 41 years, visitors coming on holiday were two years older than visitors coming for other purposes.

Between July and August 2001, seasonally adjusted visitor arrivals increased by 4 per cent. There was no change in the series between June and July 2001.

Short-term departures by New Zealand residents in August 2001 totalled 118,100, up 8,200 or 8 per cent on August 2000. The largest increase in departures was to Fiji, up 6,400 or 424 per cent. For the year ended August 2001, short-term departures totalled 1.305 million, up 64,000 or 5 per cent on the previous August year.

In the month of August 2001, the number of permanent and long-term (PLT) arrivals exceeded departures by 1,500 (net inflow), compared with a net outflow of 900 in August 2000. There was a net inflow of 1,800 in the seasonally adjusted series.

For the year ended August 2001, there was a net outflow of 4,400 PLT migrants, 56 per cent less than the net outflow of 10,000 in the previous August year. There was a net outflow to Australia of 29,100, but net inflows from China (8,600), India (3,200), South Africa (2,400), Fiji (2,000) and Japan (1,800).

Brian Pink
Government Statistician
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