Highway opens up tourism spending
Herculean efforts to reopen State Highway 1 are beginning to pay off for Kaikoura, with tourism spending up by $9 million in December.
According to estimates by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, regions showing the fastest spending growth were Taranaki, West Coast and Tasman, up from 10 per cent to 14 per cent.
Kaikoura also started to reap the rewards of earthquake repairs to the main road, which fully reopened in mid-december after a 13-month rebuild.
Improved traffic flows helped boost the town’s December visitor spend to $12m, up from $3m the previous year when access was limited after the November quake.
Destination Kaikoura general manager Glenn Ormsby said there was still some way to go to get back to pre-quake levels.
The December spend in 2015 was $16m, and for that entire year tourism brought in $111m, compared with $68m for 2017.
But the trend was encouraging and the road reopening had helped enormously, he said.
‘‘It has made all the difference – it’s like night and day.’’
Most regions showed doubledigit spending growth for December. The increased tourism spending nationally reflects the continued growth in international visitor numbers, which hit a new record of 513,000 for December.
Statistics New Zealand’s population statistics senior manager, Peter Dolan, said that was roughly equivalent to 55 Boeing 787 Dreamliners at full capacity landing every day during the month.
The total number of visitor arrivals last year was 3.7 million.
Australia was the top source of visitors (40 per cent) followed by China (11 per cent).