By 3 News online staff

On his trip to China, Prime Minister John Key has been making a pitch to boost New Zealand's share of the Chinese visitor market, which is projected to soar to 400 million tourists a year in five years' time.

China has already become New Zealand's second largest visitor market, growing 38 percent to reach more than 200,000 tourists in the last year.

So just how high can those numbers go? Tourism Industry Association policy and research manager Simon Wallace says it's feasible New Zealand could be taking in 1 million Chinese tourists a year by 2018.

"The scale of the Chinese market is a huge challenge for us, and one that we need to adapt to."

Some of those adaptations include catering to Chinese tastes in food and softening up activities such as bungy jumping and tramping.

"Rather than jump off a bungy, they'd rather watch someone else jump off a bungy," says Mr Wallace. "Instead of putting on a pair of tramping boots, they like to put on a pair of sandshoes and walk for half-an-hour, rather than a whole day in the bush.

"New Zealand is an attractive destination – they like the outdoors, they like going to beaches – but it's the soft adventure experiences that they really like, and we know that they enjoy shopping as well."

One challenge is getting Chinese visitors to stay longer. More than two-thirds come to New Zealand via Australia, and only stay a few days. Mr Wallace says we need to get them visiting not just Auckland and Rotorua, but around the country.

"That way we're going to increase the value that we get from the Chinese visitor," he says.

3 News

source: newshub archive