Big drop likely in visitors from US

By SIMON HENDERY tourisim writer

The tourism industry is likely to lose tens of millions of dollars in income from travel-wary Americans who cancel New Zealand holidays after yesterday's terrorist attacks.

The United States is this country's third largest overseas tourist market, with just under 200,000 visitors spending more than $820 million here a year.

"It's going to be bad, there's no question," said Mark Sainsbury of Pan Pacific Travel, which brought 25,000 foreign travellers to New Zealand last year (about a sixth from the US).

"[Americans] are quite isolationist by nature and when things go wrong they stay at home, and who can blame them?"

Members of the Inbound Tourism Industry Council began their annual conference in Queenstown yesterday, although Mr Sainsbury elected to fly back to Auckland to deal with fallout from the US crisis.

John Moriarty, chief executive of the Tourism Industry Association, which represents 3500 businesses and organisations, said it was too early to formulate a response to the inevitable drop in the market.

"People in the industry will be taking stock in the next few days because it is unclear what the ripple effect of this will be."

Tourism New Zealand chairman Peter Allport and Tourism Minister Mark Burton both said they were continuing to assess the international situation but it was too early to judge the long-term effects.

Dennis Pickup, managing director of Tourism Holdings, the country's largest tourist operator, said one of the country's biggest costs, fuel, was likely to rise.

But he put a positive spin on the American crisis, saying American tourists, already turned off by Europe's foot and mouth disease problems, could consider New Zealand a safe long-distance destination.

But ABN Amro's head of research, Malcolm Davie, said the tourism industry always suffered during periods of global uncertainty.

That had been demonstrated on the sharemarket yesterday, with tourism industry-related shares being punished.

"It's an awful long flight down here [and] there are lots of other havens, so to speak," Mr Davie said.

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These numbers are valid for calls from within New Zealand, but may be overloaded at the moment.

United Airlines: 0168 1800 932 8555

American Airlines: 0168 1800 245 0999

NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade: 0800 872 111

US Embassy in Wellington (recorded info): 04 472 2068

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