Visitor numbers keep falling, down 5pc in June

Visitor arrivals were down 5 per cent in June from the year before, but 6,000 more Australians visited that month. Photo/Brett Phibbs.

The number of overseas visitors arriving for short term stays fell 5 per cent in June from a month earlier, with visitor numbers from Japan falling to a 24-year low.

Last month's figures also clouded slight signs of hope for the travel industry that showed up in May.

Releasing the latest figures today, Statistics New Zealand (SNZ) said 135,200 short term overseas visitors arrived in this country in June, down 7300 from a year earlier.

That contrasts with the figures for May, which showed a rise of 1400 or 1 per cent from a year earlier to be the highest ever recorded for a May month.

Even with that small hopeful sign in May , the estimated average number of visitors in this country each day that month was down 5 per cent from May 2008.

The fall in estimated visitors in this country each day was even worse in June, down 8 per cent from a year earlier to an average of 89,800.

Visitor numbers from Japan fell 4700 or 67 per cent to 2300 last month, the lowest number of arrivals from Japan in any month since June 1985, SNZ said.

Despite the overall decline, visitor numbers from Australia rose in June, up 9 per cent or 6000 from a year earlier.

Arrivals from Australia increased in 10 of the past 12 months, when compared to the same month of the previous year.

For the year to June, visitor arrivals fell 3 per cent or 68,400 to 2.41 million.

Of the visitors to this country, 1.01m were from Australia, an increase of 4 per cent or 40,200 from the June 2008 year.

Visitors from Britain were down 28,700 or 10 per cent for the year, those from Korea were down 27,200 or 31 per cent, from Japan the fall was 26,500 or 23 per cent, from the United States 19,700 or 9 per cent, and from China 16,300 or 13 per cent.

As a result of the continuing drop in visitor arrivals from Korea to 61,700 in the June 2009 year, Germany moved ahead to become the sixth-largest source of visitors to this country, with 62,800.

Annual visitor numbers from Korea were now at levels last experienced in 2000, while the 88,500 visitors from Japan were the lowest since the July 1988 year, SNZ said.

- NZPA