Annual visitor arrivals up more than 1.2 million
Annual visitor arrivals up more than 1.2 million in five years – Media release
27 April 2018
A record 3.82 million visitors stepped onto New Zealand shores in the March 2018 year, Stats NZ said today. New Zealand has seen an increasing number of overseas visitors for the last five years, from 2.61 million in the March 2013 year. For the five years before 2013, there were around 2.5 million visitors a year.
Over the last five years the main sources of our visitors have been Australia, China, the United States, and the United Kingdom, in that order. In the March 2018 year, 39 percent of visitors came from one of our closest neighbours, Australia, followed by China (11 percent), the United States (9 percent), and the United Kingdom (7 percent).
For the March 2018 year, visitor
arrivals by port were the following:
• Auckland airport
had the majority (71 percent), with 2.72 million arrivals,
up 189,700 from the March 2017 year.
• Christchurch
airport had 554,700 arrivals, up 57,700.
• Queenstown
airport had 272,400 arrivals, up 30,200.Wellington airport
had 211,600 arrivals, down 3,800.
• Dunedin and other
airports had 7,700 arrivals, up 400.All combined seaports
had 43,100 arrivals, up 4,200.
In the March 2018 year,
1.5 million visitors from Australia arrived, up 89,100 from
the March 2017 year. Of these, 39 percent were visiting
friends and relatives and another 40 percent were here on
holiday.
Most visitors from Australia came from its eastern seaboard:
• Sydney (562,700 visitors in the
March 2018 year)
• Melbourne (407,400)
• Brisbane
(303,700)
• Coolangatta (99,000).
There were 91,200 visitors from Australia’s other ports combined (eg Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, etc).
Accommodation survey: February 2018 showed that international guest nights were boosted by international guests visiting over Chinese New Year (which fell in mid-February in 2018). Accommodation survey: March 2018 (to be released on 10 May) will show where our international guests stayed in commercial accommodation in March.
Ends