(file image). Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
Australian visitor numbers are bouncing back strongly despite representing the country's largest gap in visitor volume.
Pre-Covid-19, Australians made up about 40 percent of all overseas visitors.
Visitors numbers from Australia have recovered to 83 percent of pre-Covid levels, but there were 265,000 fewer visitors.
Auckland Airport, RotoruaNZ and Tātaki Auckland Unlimited have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to help to keep Aotearoa on the radar of Australian tourists and attract them to visit both destinations in a single trip.
The latest visitor figures were discussed during the annual Auckland Airport Tourism Forum in Wellington on Wednesday, ahead of the the industry's TRENZ conference.
They revealed that 1.27 million Australian visitors visited Aotearoa in the 12 months to February 2024, compared with 1.54 million in 2019.
Indonesia has now topped the travel destination list in Australia, representing 14 percent of all Australian outbound trips.
In 2019, that was New Zealand at 13 percent of all outbound overseas trips, but it has since dropped to 12 percent.
Auckland Airport's chief executive Carrie Hurihanganui said the industry needed solutions to help speed up the recovery of the Australian tourist market.
Auckland Airport's chief executive Carrie Hurihanganui. Photo: Supplied
"While numbers are tracking well and in-line, or even surpassing, other in-bound tourism markets, Australian tourists have an outsized impact on New Zealand's traveller recovery because they make up such a large portion of the market," Hurihanganui said.
"Our forum today is all about shining a light on the important Australian market and coming together as a tourism industry to find solutions.
"When we think of tourism it's often easy to think of the long-haul trips. However, our neighbours across the ditch are our number one volume visitor market.
"We need to ensure we remain attractive and relevant to Australian travellers as a destination in a competitive global tourism market that is also vying for high value Aussie visitors."
The demand for visiting friends and family has recovered the quickest, reaching 86 percent of 2019 levels while holiday-goers has been lagging a behind at 70 percent recovery.
The strongest recovery - and outlier - was in Queenstown, which hit 117 percent recovery compared to 2019 figures, with 235,000 Australian visitors arriving in the year to February.
The figures also revealed that international tourist numbers have surged back, with 3.1 million overseas visitors arriving in the year to February.
That was compared to 3.9 million during the same period in 2019, with United States, United Kingdom and India all above pre-Covid levels.