René de Monchy: Tourism NZ CEO on the increase in international visitors from China

Chinese visitors are making a resurgence. 

Latest Stats NZ data shows more than 408 thousand overseas tourists visited in February – an annual increase of more than 53 thousand. 

Chinese visitors topped 61 thousand – the highest monthly figure since early 2018. 

Tourism New Zealand Chief Executive René de Monchy told Mike Hosking Chinese New Year played a part, but there's been an acceleration in general. 

He says Chinese visitors have been growing at over 30% in the past six months. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you want some good news, I've got some more
good news from tourism. So we had yesterday the christ
of your tairport figures. They were excellent nationwide for you
this morning for feb four hundred and eight thousand international visitors,
which is up fifty three thousand. China's back in a
big way. Annually you get three point five eight million,
which is ninety two percent of pre COVID. Renaut Demnsch
is the chief executive at Tourism New Zealand, is with us.
Rene morning to.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
You, Good morning, make China thing.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
What's going on? The big bounce back two hundred and
fourteen percent surge, what's that about.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, Look, it's been a fantastic month of February, and
actually over the twelve months to February, it's we've seen
a really strong recovery. As you said in your introduction, Look,
China's a couple of things. One is the movement of
lunar New Year. So this year it was in February.
Last year it was in China, so that makes February
look even more fantastic this year. But more importantly, actually

(00:48):
it's we've just seen a real acceleration out of Chinese
arrivals back into New Zealand. You know, even if I
look over the last if I look over the last
six months at Chinese arrivals into New Zealand, that's been
growing at over thirty percent. So we've certainly seen a
real acceleration and a resurgence of Chinese visitors coming back

(01:09):
to New Zealand on holiday.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Good how you're balancing up the jet fuel issue therefore
capacity versus the potential demand issue for a place at
the bottom of the world, well away from trouble where
boom times could be coming.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, at the moment, like everybody, we're monitoring closely. Important
to note these numbers released yesterday are to the end
of February, so the war had not impacted these figures.
Yet we're monitoring closely what happened over March. What seems
to be the case over March is that the vast
majority of visitors, those that were impacted because of the

(01:41):
disruption of the Middle East seem to have rerouted and
still turned up in New Zealand. I'm anticipating that the
arrival numbers for March when they are finalized, will be
very positive as well. We saw very good growth of
arrivals into New Zealand for March, and that's probably the
last big month of our summer season if you like
the month of March, and we're monitoring closely. It's a

(02:03):
little too early to tell Mike what it will mean
for the future outlook. Probably one thing to note is,
you know, if you look at our big three markets Australia,
US and China, that's over sixty percent of total international visitors.
They're not reliant on the Middle East hubs to fly here,
so their flights are uninterrupted. What happens to the price
of oil is of course the big question on everybody's minds.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Indeed offset to a degree by our anemic dollar, which
also helps tourism. But we'll get you back and see
what those March numbers are when they come through. Renad
de Montho is the chief executive of Tourism New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
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