Hawke's Bay Tourism general manager Annie Dundas has welcomed the significant increase in visitor spending in the region. Visitors to the region are spending 25 percent more, with domestic tourists alone paying out $130 million more than the same period last year.
The Hawke's Bay Tourism's (HBT) Quarter1-2 (Q1-2) 2015-16 cites the Ministry of Business and Innovation's regional tourism dollar estimates at the year end March 2015, which also show a $10 million lift in the international tourist spend. HBT general manager Annie Dundas puts this welcome financial spike to a strong economy.
"People are simply travelling more, the economy is strong and people are getting away and spending. All of our advertising efforts have focused on domestic visitors so we are thrilled to see this level of growth," she said.
Dundas said the $10 million increase in international visitor dollars was good growth.
"We are happy with our international spend increase. We rely heavily on the good work by Tourism New Zealand offshore to help grow this as we simply don't have the funds to be advertising in multiple international markets,” she said.
The Q1-2 further reports that at the year ending in March the total visitor spend for the region came in at $690,000,000. That makes Hawke's Bay the sixth busiest tourism region in New Zealand after Waikato, which pulled in $1,230,000,000 in visitor spending.
The Q1-2 also reports a 5.7 drop in guest nights for the month of September 2015 over the same time last year. She added that of the reported $130 million, $61 million of this was spent on commercial accommodation.
