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Chinese visitors help fuel booming New Zealand accommodation sector

Xinhua, June 10, 2016 Adjust font size:

New Zealand's accommodation sector saw business soar in April, helped by a surge in Chinese tourists, the government statistics agency said Friday.

International guest nights in commercial accommodation were up 13.4 percent compared with April last year, more than offsetting a 2.7-percent drop in domestic guest nights, according to Statistics New Zealand.

Total guest nights for April were up 3.7 percent year on year, business indicators senior manager Neil Kelly said in a statement

With rising guest numbers and little change in accommodation capacity, hotel occupancy rates peaked at a record 80.3 percent in February this year, before easing to 71.9 percent in April.

For the year ended April, total guest nights were up 5.7 percent from the April 2015 year.

Figures from Statistics New Zealand last month showed a surge in tourists from China pushed the number of visitors to New Zealand to a new high of 256,700 in April.

The total number was up 8 percent year on year, but visitor arrivals from China were up 40 percent to 43,400.

An increase in visitor arrivals from Guangdong, Shanghai, Beijing and Zhejiang contributed to the rise in visitor arrivals from China. Endit