Auckland tourism feels the chill

Visitor numbers to the cities often suffer in May as skiers replace summer tourists. Photo / Sarah Ivey

A bumper ski season and fewer visitors from Asia are being blamed for a drop in Auckland's visitor nights during May.

The region was the worst performer out of New Zealand's 12 tourism regions with Statistics New Zealand's figures showing a 34,000 or 8.2 per cent drop in the number of nights people stayed in Auckland hotels, motels, backpackers and camping grounds compared with May last year.

The lacklustre performance was mainly driven by international visitor nights, which were down 14 per cent.

Domestic visitor nights also fell 3 per cent despite the launch of a domestic marketing campaign halfway through the month by central Auckland business group Heart of the City.

Tourism Auckland chief executive Graeme Osborne said May typically saw a seasonal adjustment as visitors switched from being summer tourists to those coming for the ski season - a move which was more advantageous to the South Island.

"Figures out of China, Japan and Korea have also been down and those markets are pretty key feeders into Auckland."

Osborne said group tours, a primary source of commercial accommodation nights in Auckland, had declined as a result of the economic situation and swine flu.

Visitor arrivals were up 1 per cent during May, mainly driven by a record number of Australians crossing the Ditch. But Osborne said many of the Australian visitors headed for the skifields or if they visited Auckland stayed with friends and family which meant they did not show up in the commercial accommodation statistics.

"Make no mistake, these are tough times - the glowing performance of the Australian market is displacing some of the true impacts of the current tourism decline."

While Australia was an important market representing around 40 per cent of all visitors to New Zealand, Australian guest nights made up only around 23 per cent of all nights in commercial accommodation, Osborne said.

Tourism Auckland would be mounting its biggest campaign into Australia in October with an outlay of $1.5 million, he said.

Overall the country's total guest nights for hotels, motels, backpackers and camping grounds were down 1 per cent in May with the South Island up 2 per cent and the North Island down 2 per cent.

International guest nights were down 6 per cent in the North Island and up 5 per cent in the South Island while domestic nights were down across the country by around 1 per cent.

Across New Zealand occupancy rates also fell to 41 per cent - the lowest since 2000.

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May guest nights, percentage change on May 2008

* Auckland: -8.2 per cent
* Southland: -3.7 per cent
* Waikato: -2.4 per cent
* Bay of Plenty: -1 per cent
* Canterbury: +1.1 per cent
* Otago: +1.2 per cent
* Wellington: +1.8 per cent
* Hawkes Bay: +4.1 per cent
* West Coast: +10.5 per cent
* New Zealand: -0.6 per cent