Kiwis get more adventurous about travelling

By JIM EAGLES, travel editor

New Zealanders are slowly becoming more adventurous about overseas travel. In the past five years, the number of Kiwis making short-term trips abroad has climbed by 28 per cent to 1.5 million. And we are going to a much wider range of countries.

Back in 1999 just four countries - Australia, Fiji, Britain and the United States - were the main destinations in 72 per cent of travel abroad.

The latest figures from Statistics New Zealand show the proportion of travellers with one of that quartet as their main destination is now down to 67 per cent.

Not a huge movement, maybe, but a trend that looks likely to continue.

That's because the latest figures also show a sharp rise in trips principally to exotic destinations such as Monaco and Malta, Slovenia and Latvia, Tunisia and Iran, China and Vietnam, Costa Rica and Venezuela, Mozambique and Tanzania. Travel agents indicate this is a growing pattern.

But Australia remains by far the most popular destination for New Zealanders heading abroad.

Five years ago 53 per cent of overseas trips were across the ditch and the latest figures show that virtually unchanged at 52 per cent.

That's hardly surprising, considering it is our closest neighbour, there are increasing business and family ties across the Tasman, airfares are cheaper and flights go to a wider range of destinations.

In the circumstances, it is perhaps surprising that a higher proportion of people are not travelling to Australia.

The popularity of the other top destinations has fallen more sharply.

Five years ago 5.8 per cent of Kiwi travellers went to Fiji. Now, despite lower airfares, that has fallen to 5.2 per cent.

The weakening of ties with Britain has seen the proportion going there fall from 5.9 per cent to 4.7 per cent.

Of course, the number of travellers heading for those three destinations has increased - in the case of Australia it is up from 626,744 a year to 782,798 - but the increase hasn't kept pace with the overall rise.

But in the case of the United States, not only has the proportion of New Zealanders going there dropped from 6.7 per cent to 4.7 per cent, the number has fallen as well, from 79,071 to 70,841 annually.

Other significant destinations to have seen the number of visiting New Zealanders fall markedly include the Netherlands, Indonesia - a huge drop from 19,971 to 11,383 - Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and Canada.

So where are we going instead?

In the Pacific the biggest beneficiary from the change in travelling patterns has been the Cook Islands. Five years ago it received 12,494 visitors from New Zealand and that has more than doubled to 26,126.

Tonga has also had above-average growth, but Samoa and Vanuatu have just held their own.

The number of people going to tiny Tokelau and Micronesia has jumped sharply but remains small.

Antarctica continues to appeal. The number of New Zealanders heading for the frozen continent has nearly trebled in the past five years, but it is still only 176.

In Western Europe the lure of spending a year in Provence has seen those heading for France increase from 5321 annually to 9073 over the past five years.

Ireland, Switzerland - maybe the result of the America's Cup - Italy and Spain have also had above-average rises. The numbers going to Malta and Monaco has more than doubled but is still tiny.

The biggest growth of any region has been in trips to Eastern Europe after the collapse of the iron curtain and the eastward expansion of the European Union.

In the past five years the number of Kiwis going to Eastern Europe, although still small, has nearly doubled from 3719 to 6990, and travel agents indicate that trend is accelerating.

The most popular destinations are Russia, the Czech Republic and Croatia.

Surprisingly, the violence in the Middle East has not prevented a steady increase in visitor numbers, which have grown from 4395 to 7605.

Most of that growth has been to the United Arab Emirates - probably because of the arrival in New Zealand of Emirates Airlines - which is now the most popular destination in the region.

Statistics NZ's figures indicate that, despite the lure of the pyramids and the Sphinx, the attraction of Egypt has slipped a little over the years and even high interest in the Anzac commemorations at Gallipoli has not stopped a drop in the number going primarily to Turkey.

The past five years have been notable for an increase in interest in Iran - the number of visiting New Zealanders has soared from 96 to 868 - Tunisia, Libya and, probably for reasons far removed from holidays, Iraq and Kuwait.

Overall interest in Asia seems to be waning but that has not stopped a surge in New Zealanders going to China.

Five years ago only 10,027 of us were heading that way but in the past year the figure has risen to 38,322.

China has gone from being eighth on the Asian list to first, in the process overtaking Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan, most of which saw numbers fall or at best had below-average growth.

India, the world's second most-populous nation, is also looking more interesting to New Zealanders, with the number going there almost doubling to 14,134.

The big loser in these figures is the Americas.

Both the US and Canada had fewer Kiwi visitors in the past year than they did five years ago. And the numbers going to Central and South America rose only slightly.

More than a thousand Kiwi travellers had Argentina, Brazil or Mexico as their main destination when they headed off in the past year, but even those places saw little real growth.

Costa Rico had a mini-boom, with numbers rising from 19 to 123, and Trinidad also had a jump, from 17 to 75, but overall interest in the continent has fallen.

South Africa is pretty much the only place in Africa attracting New Zealanders these days.

The number going to the rainbow nation - boosted no doubt by South African migrants visiting their old home - has risen over the past five years from 5890 to 8917.

In the same period, terrorism and unrest has seen interest in previously popular destinations such as Kenya and Zimbabwe decline sharply.

But there has been a minor jump in interest in more stable places such as Ghana, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Mozambique, though numbers remain small.

Overall, most of us still tend to travel to the old familiar places, but China, Eastern Europe, Dubai, South Africa and lots of really exotic places are exercising increasing appeal.

If you want to join that trend, and maybe see yourself in next year's statistics, the countries that no one gave as their main destination in the past year include Wallis and Futuna, Albania, Moldova, North Korea, Krygyzstan, Falkland Islands, Suriname, Uruguay, Aruba, Cayman Islands, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Lesotho, Madagascar and Malawi.

Plenty of scope there.