Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Lousie Upston: Tourism Minister on the latest Stats NZ tourism figures

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Lousie Upston: Tourism Minister on the latest Stats NZ tourism figures · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Tourism well and truly back in business. Total spend has
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: hit forty six point six billion in the year of March.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: That's up three point three percent. Now overseas visitors spend
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: this is your foreigners coming here and having fun, jump
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: seven percent to eighteen point one billion. Eleven percent of
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the workforce is tourism employed in the sector, so that's good.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Louise Upston, Tourism Minister here to talk about the numbers. Louise,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: good morning, Good morning Ran. That is good news and
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: particularly the foreign visitors and the Chinese are coming back.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: They're still not recovered from COVID.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, So just the numbers that were released yesterday
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: relate to the period to March twenty five, so that
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: is you know, looking at historic data. But it's really
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: great to see strong recovery in international visitors because if
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: you think about what that means, more tourists means more
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: customers for Kiwi businesses. That's why we're seeing the jobs,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: the number of Kiwis employed in tourism and hospitality increasing
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: as well. That's exactly what we want in terms of
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: growing the economy.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: In terms of the Chinese numbers. Have you seen in
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: the intervening period them coming back stronger.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Definitely, So tourism businesses would say the Lunar New Year period,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: which is just the last few weeks, has been particularly strong.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: There were a number of changes that we made at
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: the end of last year around some visa settings that
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: have had a significant impact. One of them is that
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: if a Chinese person is in Australia and they have
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: an Australian visa, they can enter New Zealand visa free.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: We think, and we're trialing that for twelve months. We
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: think that's had a really significant impact. So as we
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: see more data coming out, I'm very very positive that
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: we will achieve our target of getting our visitor numbers
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: back to what they were pre COVID.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: We're still I mean, tourism was number one in terms
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: of expert export earnings pre COVID. We haven't returned it
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: to its men tool yet. Do you think that'll come
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: soon or do you think there is just doing too good?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Well, we're at number two at the moment, and we
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: do have an ambitious target to double the value of
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: tourism exports within the decade, and we've got a tourism
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: growth roadmap that basically maps out how we do that,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: but it is important. Export growth is important because it
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: directly means an increase in jobs for New Zealanders. Key.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: We businesses are growing and that means an increase in wages.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: So that's why it is absolutely critical that we keep
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: our focus on growing tourism and I'm really really excited
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: to see that we're seeing results already.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: All Right, well, appreciate your time this morning. Louise upstin
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: the Tourism Minister. For more from earlier edition with Ryan Bridge,
• 2:49
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• 2:52
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