Annual tourist spending in New Zealand was little changed as a rising number of low-spending Australians wasn't enough to make up for a decline in Korean and Japanese arrivals.
Some 2.62 million international visitors spent $5.64 billion in the 12 months ended March 31, compared to 2.51 million arrivals spending $5.63 billion a year earlier, according to Ministry of Economic Development figures. That excludes international airfares.
More Australian visitors taking advantage of a strong currency didn't result in a similar pick-up in spending, with the average spend among the 1.17 million tourists down 6 per cent at $1,500 a head.
Declining numbers of big-spending tourists from Japan and Korea stripped out $182 million of total spending in the year, though that was offset by an extra $390 million from the Rugby World Cup in the latter half of the year.
"Today's figures continue to significant decline in real tourist expenditure of the past seven years," Tourism Ministry research and evaluation manager Peter Ellis said in a statement. "This is mostly because of the increasing proportion of visitors who are relatively low-spending Australian residents."
