Tyra 'can't wait' to get to NZ

Host Tyra Banks confirmed the New Zealand filming rumour on Twitter. Photo / Supplied

The makers of the television series, America's Next Top Model, say several episodes will be filmed in New Zealand.

The locations and "challenges" the contestants will undertake here have not been announced.

In each series of the show, called a "cycle", aspiring models are sent to an international destination where they are presented with challenges that feature a local designer or celebrity.

Rumours of the New Zealand filming of cycle 14 of the show began circulating last week.

"Rumours are true, Top Model is going to New Zealand," host Tyra Banks said on Twitter, the social networking site. "Can't wait to get there. Are you excited?"

Tourism New Zealand spokeswoman Cas Carter said the organisation was working with the programme's producers.

"We have been working with them for some months. We certainly have given them advice on locations and helped them with contacts, including designers."

Ms Carter said Tourism NZ worked hard to build the country's profile as an attractive filming destination, which had been boosted by the production of reality series The Bachelor.

"If we can have programmes like The Bachelor and America's Next Top Model being shown with New Zealand's beautiful landscapes and all the amazing things you can do in New Zealand, that helps promote New Zealand as a tourism destination at the same time as showing that programme.

"It's a great opportunity to get profile that we couldn't possibly ever pay for in that market."

A spokeswoman for CBS Studios, which makes the show, said: "Every season we go to an away location and for [cycle] 14, it will be New Zealand," she said.

The reasons New Zealand was chosen were also under wraps until further "down the track".

The series, the 14th, will be broadcast in the US between February and April. The 12th series has just been broadcast in New Zealand.