New Zealand travellers spend more than $1 billion in Australia

New Zealanders shopped until they dropped in Australia to the tune of $1.08 billion last year, according to government statistics released today.

A survey of returned travellers to the year ending June 30, 2003, showed New Zealanders spent $2.7 billion overseas, with 40 per cent of that forked out in Australia.

The next highest level of spending was in Britain at 12 per cent, followed by the United States at 9 per cent and Fiji came in fourth at 3 per cent.

The statistics showed New Zealanders' growing love of credit cards accounted for over 40 per cent of all overseas travel spending, a significant difference to a decade ago when only 25 per cent of expenditure was chalked up to credit.

Statistics New Zealand spokeswoman Geraldine Davies said only 17 per cent of travellers preferred to pay for their expenses in cash.

"Our spending habits have changed significantly. The survey showed only 3 per cent of travellers used travellers cheques -- 10 years ago 25 per cent of people preferred travellers cheques. Debit cards accounted for 9 per cent of spending transactions."

There were 1.1 million return trips made by New Zealanders in the surveyed period, Ms Davies said..

Four times as many New Zealanders went overseas for personal reasons compared to business-related travel, and the vacationers spent longer periods out of the country, although both groups ended up spending about the same amount of money.

On average, New Zealanders spent $2379 per trip.

- NZPA