Just 61 tourists shy of 3.5m milestone

New Zealand was just 61 visitors away from reaching the milestone of 3.5 million international visitors.

“Our challenge now is to maintain the growth trajectory in a sustainable way,” said Chris Roberts, Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA) chief executive.

There were 3,499,939 short-term arrivals for 2016, up 12 per cent or an additional 368,000 visitors on the previous year. This was the biggestever increase in international visitors for a single year, TIA said.

There was impressive growth from some of the Asian markets, with South Korea up 27 per cent, Malaysia 51 per cent and the Philippines up 45 per cent on 2015.

The number of visitors from Argentina has almost trebled, showing the value of new air services such as Air NZ’s Buenos Aires-Auckland service.

New air routes also helped the tourism industry grow a range of strong visitor markets.

On Waitangi Day, Qatar Airways starts flying here and three Asian carriers started services during the past three months.

Roberts said growth meant the industry was well on its way to achieving its Tourism 2025 goal of growing annual tourism revenue to $41 billion by 2025.

“Our challenge now is to encourage international visitors to disperse to all parts of the country, and to come to New Zealand in autumn, spring and winter,” said Roberts.

“However, we do need to invest for success. We need well-targeted investment in infrastructure so we can sustainably manage future growth.”

TIA is conducting an assessment of tourism infrastructure.