Source: Radio New Zealand
Hotels in places like Queenstown and Auckland would likely have days where they were at capacity over summer, Sudima Hotels’ Les Morgan says. 123RF
A hotel chain says they are seeing a steady increase in international visitors across the country.
Stats NZ figures show visitor arrivals from across the Tasman reached 1.48 million in the year ended September, up from 1.33m the year before.
Overall visitor arrivals were 3.43m for the year, an increase of 197,000 from the prior year. Aside from Australia, the biggest increases were from the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan.
Sudima Hotels chief operation officer Les Morgan told Morning Report business had been good with winter meeting their expectations and good growth continuing.
“Australians especially but all markets are up, maybe with the exception of the Chinese which remains flat.”
The level of domestic activity was harder to measure, but New Zealand corporate clients tended to be travelling and attending conferences a bit more in the last quarter, he said.
But internationally conference numbers were down 12 percent which may be why tourism levels were not back to where they once were, he said.
Queenstown and Christchurch were performing well in terms of tourist numbers, he said.
“Christchurch is looking really good, I’ve recently come back from a sales mission in China and the interest in Christchurch is very strong, people are looking to extend stays there, Rotorua’s been solid – the exception is Auckland for reasons we all know, but the rest of the country is looking great.”
It was likely there would be days over the summer where places like Queenstown and Christchurch were at capacity, he said.
Auckland’s issues included the lack of major events, the fact that the domestic economy was still flat, “and from a hoteliers point of view there’s a huge increase in inventory” which made it tough, he said.
“I think the summer will probably see occupancy levels around the mid 70s [percent], so still plenty of capacity in Auckland.”
The industry largely supported the introduction of a bed tax in Auckland, he said.
“Hoteliers in the last few years we have come around and believe a bed tax is potentially the way forward but we’ve got some concerns about how that might be implemented.”
Morgan said for the first time in four or five years the industry was feeling very optimistic.
The tourism industry was hoping for a big improvement in the short to medium term with the New Zealand International Convention Centre in Auckland and the economy slowly recovering but steadily, he said.
“I think the most pleasing thing is that, you know post GFC [global financial crisis] tourism really bounced back and kind of caught us by surprise, put all sorts of pressure on infrastructure and our communities and we’re not seeing that.
“I think the recovery’s is nice and slow and steady and we’re much more planned and you know I think that gives us a great deal of confidence that things are going to be great.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
