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Tourism New Zealand has championed the New Zealand destination brand in China for over 20 years. The resulting strong growth in holiday travel between the two countries underpinned significant airline growth. This resulted in outcomes and opportunities in tourism, trade and education through people-to-people connections.
An indirect outcome from the growth in holiday travel and resulting increased air connectivity was the ability for exporters to send high value perishable goods as freight in passenger aircraft to 7 destinations in China and beyond. In many cases this meant that produce sent between our two countries could be presented for sale within 24 hours after they left the country.
Though travel between China and Aotearoa began prior to 2000, leisure travel really began once Aotearoa New Zealand was granted Approved Destination Status (ADS) in 1999. Tourism New Zealand’s role was to administer the outcomes from the ADS policy.
ADS was being approved to sell group travel experiences from China through approved travel sellers to approved countries.
Over time Tourism New Zealand has evolved its ADS activity into administering the ADS Code of Conduct. Reformed during COVID-19, the Code of Conduct ensures high quality group tours are sold.
High quality group tours account for length of stay, type of accommodation, spending, quality and safe transport through approved operators and ensuring Chinese visitors to Aotearoa experienced our famous manaakitanga.
ADS effectively gave Tourism New Zealand the space to grow the Chinese travel market, and we saw year-on-year proportional increases in the Free and Independent Travel (FIT) market. Chinese FIT stay longer, explore a wide range of our regions and our experiences on offer.
Tourism New Zealand supported the evolution of New Zealand in becoming a destination more at ease and familiar with how Chinese visitors travelled and consumed content. Examples of Tourism New Zealand’s contribution in building destination appeal and brand equity include presence and active community management amongst key Chinese social channels like WeChat, Weibo, Douyin and Mafengwo.
During the COVID pandemic Tourism New Zealand have been a leading Destination Marketing Organisation when it comes to the use of innovative technologies, such as digital influencers (via our partnership with Vogue China), and livestreaming platforms.
Tourism New Zealand has had people based in mainland China from early 2000s. We now have a main office in Shanghai with satellite offices in Beijing and Guangzhou. Tourism New Zealand is the custodian of promoting destination New Zealand and responsible for the development of the holiday and business events markets. Prior to COVID-19 the mainland Chinese market was Aotearoa’s second largest international visitor market behind Australia peaking in 2018 at 448,000 pax.