Tourism New Zealand says the Middle Earth push is still working after 15 years.
The government-owned marketing body says its surveys showed almost one in five international visitors say the Hobbit was a factor in choosing New Zealand to visit and 437,000 people have some kind of Hobbit or Lord of the Rings experience.
Although Middle Earth was not the focus of current overseas campaigns, another movie was still working for Austria, said Tourism New Zealand's director of PR, trade and major events, Rene de Monchy.
"What we do is that we always look at the Sound of Music in Salzburg - 50 years on they still get 300,000 visitors to the Von Trapp house."
The New Zealand figures were released in the latest International Visitor Survey findings from MBie for the year to September.