Cash boosts Australian tourist campaign

Tourism NZ says it normally advertises widely to attract Australians for the skiing season. Photo / Supplied

Tourism New Zealand would have been forced to stop marketing to Australia from next month because it had run out of money.

Prime Minister John Key, who is also the Tourism Minister, yesterday revealed an urgent $2.5 million funding boost.

Tourism NZ chief executive George Hickton said the marketing body had been in talks with the Government since Christmas because it knew it had already chewed through its $9 million Australian marketing budget for the 2008/2009 financial year.

Australia is New Zealand's largest source of tourists and in the year to January about 908,000 Australians visited.

Hickton said Tourism NZ had brought forward its spending to target the Australian market over the summer period to help counter a drop off from other markets, including Britain and United States.

In December, New Zealand had the highest number of Australian visitors in one month.

When asked how significant the money was, Hickton said it was a quarter of the annual budget for Australia.

"To put it mildly, we would have run out of money in the first week of April without it."

He said the extra money would help Tourism NZ get through to the end of the Government's fiscal year at June 30. It would then be able to tap into new funding announced in the May Budget.

Without the funding,Tourism NZ believed the country would have gone backwards in its market share of Australian visitors.

"We estimate by spending this money, we will save $64 million in declines."

Hickton said Tourism NZ normally advertised widely to attract Australians for skiing and to experience the autumn.

The money would allow it to run a new advertising campaign as part of its "What's on" marketing programme as well as bringing Australian media over.

Air New Zealand said it would spend an extra $500,000 on marketing and $2 million on 10,000 to 15,000 free seats on domestic flights to be offered with paid transtasman fares.

Group general manager short haul airlines Bruce Parton said the airline had not been prompted by the Government, its major shareholder, to make the additional investment.

"We see this as a good way to get the message across the Tasman."

Parton said it would combine forces with Tourism NZ on its campaign and hoped to implement it by the start of next month to run through to June over the quieter winter season.

Tourism Industry Association chief executive Tim Cossar said he had been aware for some time that Tourism NZ had been forced to stretch its resources to try to target specific markets and that was why the association had backed its calls for more funding.