KEY POINTS:
Tourism industry chiefs have suffered a weak start to the year, but say a busy February and good indications for March have set the industry up for a good 2007.
Statistics New Zealand said overseas visitor arrivals in January were 246,748, down 1.5 per cent on last year. There was also a seasonally adjusted drop of 3 per cent from December, which itself was down 2 per cent on November.
Paul Yeo, chief executive of the Inbound Tour Operators Council, said the general feeling was that January had softened.
But he wasn't concerned. "We had an absolutely boomer February this year," he said.
March was also looking pretty good although the trend towards shorter notice bookings made it harder to get a feel for the market, he said.
"All the signs are there for a good 2007 at this stage."
Tourism New Zealand chief executive George Hickton said the industry was reporting a strong summer.
"While some say there was a slightly flat period for international visitors around Christmas, most say bookings are very good for the rest of the season."
Yeo said meeting the demand in February had been a challenge "because it was such a good month our capacity was squeezed to the gunnels. There were times when it was very hard to get a bed in many of our visitor destinations and coaches were in short supply, campervans were in short supply and that's a good thing."
January and February numbers needed to be taken together to account for the calendar timing of events such as the Chinese new year, Yeo said.
Australian visitor numbers were down 0.8 per cent to 74,676, the UK was up 7.6 per cent at 45,668 but Japan fell by 19.1 per cent to 12,236.
The decline of the Japanese market was hurting the industry. But markets such as China and Korea were up.
"It's having an impact on our industry because there are some businesses which specialise in some markets," Yeo said. "If you do that it is a little bit of a risk because if a market goes down then you go down with it."
