Two-thirds growth in tourism spending forecast by 2022

Associate Tourism Minister Paula Bennett has welcomed new forecasts showing tourism expenditure is expected to grow by 65 percent to $16 billion in 2022 although she admits it comes with a few challenges.

Tourism industry leaders at the annual Trenz conference say they're looking to government to help with capacity and infrastructure constraints during peak season due to the growth in international visitors.

Mrs Bennett said Prime Minister John Key, who is also Minister of Tourism, will be making an announcement today.

The government has specific sympathy for towns with a small rating base or that just have a large number of tourists passing through to fund new infrastructure to support the expected influx of visitors, she said.

Yesterday the Tourism Industry Association said addressing capacity and infrastructure complaints was its main priority this year, with more hotels required along with better roading, sewerage and other infrastructure, particularly in some of the smaller regions.

The big push by Tourism New Zealand is getting more visitors in the shoulder seasons and to disperse away from the traditional hotspots such as Queenstown and Rotorua into other regions.

The New Zealand Tourism Forecast 2016-2022 report, released by the Ministry of Business at TRENZ today, shows China is expected to surpass Australia as New Zealand's largest tourism market by spend in the next two years. Most Chinese visitors arrive during the Chinese New Year which falls in the peak season.

The TIA has identified 18 initiatives to grow an expected shortfall in tourism workers due to the upturn and Mrs Bennett said the government was making progress on a number of those.

She said a key one was trying to give regional workers 12 months' employment rather than just four months during the summer peak, including connecting different companies who may want to employ the same worker at different times of the year.

More than 50% of all international tourists visit a Department of Conservation site and there have been calls for a charge to visit the national parks.

Mrs Bennett said she didn't favour charging people for access to the national parks but consideration was being given to charging for other services provided on the DOC estate.

New Zealand is forecast to hit 4.5 million visitors by 2022 from 3.1 million last year, reaching 4 million by 2019.

Visitor spend is expected to grow faster than volume with Chinese visitors expected to account for 20% of total arrivals and a third of total spend by 2022.

The US, the UK, Japan and Germany – New Zealand's other large tourism markets – are expected to remain healthy with projected growth ranging from 3.2-7.4% a year to 2022.

India is expected to be a strong growth market off a low base, hitting a forecast 93,000 by 2022 or 10.6% annual growth. Indians tourists typically come during the shoulder season and MBIE is picking it could become a major market for New Zealand with the rise of the Indian middle class.

(BusinessDesk)