Chinese tourists to spend more, stay longer than Aussies: MB
Chinese tourists to spend more, stay longer than Aussies: MBIE
By Anna Lu for BusinessDesk
May
18 (BusinessDesk) - China is expected to overtake Australia
as the biggest tourism market for New Zealand in terms of
expenditure within seven years.
With a 14 percent
compound average growth rate, China is reckoned to increase
its share of tourism spending in New Zealand from 14 percent
last year to 23.6 percent in 2021, totaling $2.6 billion, as
visitor numbers increase 11.6 percent, according to a
forecast released by the Ministry of Business, Innovation
and Employment at New Zealand's annual Trenz tourism
conference in Rotorua.
Also announced today is the
continuation of seasonal direct flights by Taiwanese carrier
China Airlines, a leading player in North Asian markets, to
Christchurch into the upcoming summer, with three
connections a week from Taipei in Taiwan via Sydney. The
airline trialled the flights first last summer.
The
anticipated increase in spending by Chinese tourists is
partly driven by a shift to more free independent travelers,
who tend to travel more extensively and stay longer.
Meanwhile, Australia will remain the top source of visitors
to New Zealand, with a 3 percent increase annually, said
Michael Bird, MBIE's general manager for institutions and
system performance.
Chinese tourists are expected to
prolong the average length of their stay from 18 days last
year to 28 days in 2021 while the Australians will continue
to keep their stay as long as 12 days, as they come mainly
for family and friends visits.
Meanwhile, Auckland
International Airport announced today a $100,000 tourism
fund to help boost Asian markets in low seasons.
Each
award-winning seasonal tourism offering will receive $25,000
from the fund, which encourages new itineraries tailored to
the rise of free independent travelers.
Christchurch International Airport also announced the creation of a "New Horizons Fund", with a $100,000 annual budget to "support a minimum of two South Island tourism operators into the China market each year."
Also announced today at Trenz
conference was the renewal of a joint marketing partnership
between Air New Zealand and Tourism New Zealand to spend
more than $20 million in the 2016 financial year.
They
will each invest more than $10 million over 12 months in
cooperative marketing activity in the key markets of China,
Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, North America, the United
Kingdom and Europe as well as activity in Latin America.
The emerging free independent traveler market in
China is heavily influenced by Internet and social media as
top information-gathering channels for visitors, according
to joint research by Auckland Airport and MBIE.
The
most high-profile effort was Air New Zealand and Tourism New
Zealand co-hosting China’s top reality TV programme
“Dad, where are we going?” to film in New Zealand last
year, which reached a Chinese audience of 400 million and a
further 26 million social media users.
(Anna Lu is a
reporter from the Shanghai Daily news service, interning
with BusinessDesk on an Asia-NZ Foundation
programme)
(BusinessDesk)