René de Monchy: Tourism New Zealand CEO on the rising overseas visitor numbers reaching 86% of pre-Covid numbers

The tourism sector's still fighting for pre-Covid numbers. 

The most recent International Visitor Survey shows overseas visitor numbers have lifted by nearly 200 thousand over the past year – up 5%. 

Their spending was up by around $500 million but is still only 86% of pre-Covid numbers.  

Tourism New Zealand CEO René de Monchy told Mike Hosking they're pushing to get visitor numbers back up to pre-Covid levels by the end of next year. 

He says a lot of overseas markets are competing for international visitors. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So tourism getting bigger and better and brighter. Spending has
had twelve point one billion in the year to June,
which is up four point three percent. International arrivals are
up five percent to three point three eight million of them.
Rene de Monts is the Tourism New Zealand boss. He's
back with this random morning morning Mike. Up is good,
but it's still a slow grind. Is that fair?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah, look up as good as you say. You know,
twelve point one billion, so that's up four percent, so
you know, five hundred million more on the year before.
So that's good news. But you're right, it certainly continues
to be competitive. I'm an eternal optimist, Mike, So I
continue to look at going. I think there's plenty of
opportunities still ahead of us.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Well, I hope so, because in justin for inflation, we're
still spending wise at eighty six percent, so we're sort
of going nowhere fast. When do you reckon one hundred
Is you got any idea?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, we're targeting to get back to one hundred percent
of visitor arrivals by the end of next year. That's
that's quite a big that's quite a big task. But
there's certainly a big focus from US, you know, really
enticing visitors, having an urgency to them to get them
to make that booking for New Zealand as soon as possible,
and we're seeing some really good results out of that.
But you know, it is a competitive world and we're

(01:10):
seeing you know, we've seen lots of markets really compete
for international visitors.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
I was reading the other day, I had it wrong.
I thought capacity was back. Apparently capacity isn't back. Is
it coming back? How quickly is it coming back? And
when will it be back to normal? If ever?

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Is that the airline capacity might come out? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Look it's around about ninety four percent probably the latest numbers,
so is a bit slower. You know, that's both there's
a lot of kind of challenges with airlines, engine problems
that you've no doubt heard about, but certainly we've been
actively also working with the airports to entice airlines back
to New Zealand. The outlook I think for the summer

(01:48):
is probably about ninety five ninety six percent, So it
is building, but fair to say building a little bit
slower than we would have hoped.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Okay, they talked to the North Island people yesterday or
across in Australia at the moment, New Zealanding, how much
of the individuals are out there selling or pitching for
Australia or the North Islanders pitching versus the New Zealand Inc.
One stop shop We're open for business type campaign.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, the good thing is there's a lot of collaboration
in the tourism sector. So I know, the North Island
road shows in Australia at the moment, we really welcome
that because that's a combined effort. You know, we work
together in Australia and a lot of a lot of activities,
so it's really you know, the sum of the parts
make up the whole. But there's lots of different parts
of the sector promoting New Zealand. But you know Australia

(02:34):
is a touch on. But Australia has actually been performing really,
really well. We've seen strong double digit growth inbound over
the last sent me over this year and the outlook
for the kind of quarter ahead is of similar trends.
So that's really positive to see.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Good to hear, Rene, good to catch up. Renaud de
Montsho's the CEO of Tourism New Zealand. Jesus its slow isn't.
The end of next year is twenty six and COVID
was nineteen. Were only back to where we were. For
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