It is not every day a top national tourism official calls for a slowdown in tourism.
That is exactly what Tourism New Zealand chief Kevin Bowler appears to have done, saying Chinese visitor numbers are ‘growing faster than we really want.’
Speaking to The Herald newspaper, Bowler said infrastructure was struggling to keep up with the increasing numbers of Chinese tourists.
They are currently growing at over 30% per annum and you will remember that last summer we had some really difficult challenges accommodating all of the visitors over the peak period," Bowler said.
"If we keep growing at that rate we’re going to have some real capacity problems, particularly over the peak season … hotels just aren’t being built fast enough."
Bowler said Tourism NZ is focused on promoting the quieter autumn and spring seasons and to redistribute tourism to other parts of the country.
"It’s possibly less about slowing growth down and more about redistributing visitors into shoulder seasons and also trying to focus on longer-staying visitors who are going to spread out a lot more around the country," he said.
"The current pattern is concentrating a lot of visitors into Auckland, Rotorua and Queenstown.
Air New Zealand chief executive Christopher Luxon said the airline is also trying to promote more tourism during the shoulder season.
"What we don’t want over the next five to 10 years is to have a great economic win but a social and an environmental negative," he said. "We have this massive peak over the summer period – that creates more pressure in the system. We want to distil that out over the full-year," Luxon said.
