Tourism industry aims to outdo forecast

5 September 2014

Media Release

Tourism industry aims to outdo forecast
Performance

The tourism industry is aiming to outperform the government’s tourism forecasts released today, to cement its position as one of New Zealand’s biggest export sectors, the Tourism Industry Association New Zealand (TIA) says.

TIA Chief Executive Chris Roberts says the five-year forecasts are a prediction of likely visitor numbers and visitor spend in a business as usual approach.

“The tourism industry has signalled through the Tourism 2025 growth framework that by aligning our efforts we can do much better than BAU,” Mr Roberts says.

“Our challenge is to treat these Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment forecasts as a minimum target and then to take action which drives even greater returns for the industry and our individual operators.”

The Tourism 2025 growth framework identifies a range of opportunities to grow tourism’s contribution to the economy. The focus is on growing volume, but growing value faster.

The new forecasts reinforce the Tourism 2025 view that some of the greatest opportunities for New Zealand’s tourism industry lie within the Pacific Rim, most obviously within the rapidly growing Chinese market but potentially also with other Asian visitor markets like India and Indonesia.

“The forecasts predict an impressive 132% lift in spend by visitors from China out to 2020.

This provides the industry with a sound platform to lift this performance through Tourism 2025 initiatives such as better targeting and attracting high value Chinese visitors,” Mr Roberts says.

“There are several event-specific opportunities during the five-year period of the forecasts for the industry to capitalise on. The first of these is the Cricket World Cup early next year, especially for those markets which can take advantage of the new single visa that can be used by visitors to Australia and New Zealand during the tournament. The 2015 FIFA under-20 World Cup and the 2017 World Masters Games also offer excellent opportunities.”

It is also great to see the positive outlook for traditional visitor markets like the USA and Germany as their home economies improve, he says.

TIA will be working with its members and the government to achieve the Tourism 2025 targets. The recently released 2014 Tourism Election Manifesto highlights a set of priority actions for the incoming Government to support tourism value growth.

Key Facts
• Tourism is one of New Zealand’s biggest export industries, earning $9.8 billion or 16.1% of New Zealand’s foreign exchange earnings (year ended March 2013)
• Tourism directly and indirectly contributes almost 9% of gross domestic product (GDP)for New Zealand
• Tourism directly and indirectly generates 8.8% of total employment in New Zealand or 172,100 full-time equivalent jobs
• Tourism in New Zealand is a $65.5 million per day industry. Tourism delivers $26.8million in foreign exchange to the New Zealand economy each day of the year. Domestic tourism contributes another $38.9 million in economic activity every day
• Total tourism expenditure reached $23.9 billion for the year ended March 2013
Visit www.tianz.org.nz for more information.

ENDS

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