Fewer holidaymakers chose to visit New Zealand in the year to September, despite an overall increase in visitor arrivals.
Tourist in the Tongariro Alpine Crossing National Park. Photo: 123rf
New Stats NZ figures show total arrivals increased 2.5 percent to hit 3.9 million compared with the September 2018 year.
But the number of people arriving for a holiday dropped by close to 1 percent to 1.9 million during the same period.
Tourism New Zealand commercial director Rene de Monchy said this was on trend with the softening visitor numbers forecast for the country.
"It reflects particularly the highly competitive nature of the sector. There is a little bit of a global slow down in travel," he said.
"More importantly, I think is just the high level of competition that we as New Zealand are also operating in, so we have to work harder and harder every year to get people to choose New Zealand as their holiday destination."
That was where the Good Morning World and other campaigns kicked in to help attract more tourists to visit, he said.
Tourism New Zealand has been focusing more of its energy on core visitor markets.
"In this highly competitive market, as a fixed funded organisation, we have to work hard to make those dollars work and given the current environment, we've had to prioritise some projects in Australia, China and the US ahead of those other markets to see if we can increase that performance," Mr de Monchy said.
Overall strong growth in Australian visitor arrivals was dampened by a drop in other markets in the year to September.
Australian arrivals exceeded 1.5 million during that period.
It was a 3.8 percent increase compared with the September 2018 year following a boost in the number of flights between the two countries
But Stats NZ said there had been a decline in visitor arrivals from Asia, particularly China and Malaysia.