Visitor arrivals in December 2024 were at their highest monthly level since December 2019, just before the pandemic began, however, they are still at 89 per cent of the short-term arrival figures of December 2019, indicating the pandemic recovery is not yet complete.
For the year to December 2024, international arrivals into New Zealand were 3.3 million, up 12 per cent compared to the previous calendar year, but still at just a touch under 85 per cent of pre-pandemic figures. Total visitor arrivals for the year to December 2019 were 3.89 million.
For the 2024 year, Australia was New Zealand’s largest source market by a huge margin – there were 1,385,323 visitors from Australia and 369,635 from the US, which was New Zealand’s second largest source market. China, the United Kingdom and India made up the remainder of the top five source markets. The US and India are the only two of the top five who are performing better than pre-pandemic. If visitation from China recovers fully, it should return to second place, up from its current third.
“There were just over 2,200 more international flights to New Zealand in 2024 than in 2023,” said Stats NZ’s international travel statistics spokesperson Sarah Drake.
“This included 1,700 more direct flights from Australia, China and the United States, combined.”
Stats NZ has also recently released international tourism spend figures from the year to March 2024, which show the massive increase in tourism spending compared to the previous 12-month period.
While the 59.9 per cent rise in international visitor spending is perhaps unsurprising given New Zealand only fully opened its international border in mid-2022, the results show that international visitor spending had returned to just a touch under pre-pandemic levels by March 2024. Over the year to March, international visitor spend was NZ$16.9 billion, compared to NZ$17.2 billion for the same period immediately pre-pandemic.
The latest data from the Tourism Satellite Account for the year to March 2024, also shows the return of international conference attendees, with those travelling to attend a convention up by 83.4 per cent compared to the previous year to 28,116. However, this is a fraction of the number of international conference delegates compared to pre-pandemic, with figures for the year to March 2019 showing 76,855 international arrivals were in New Zealand to attend conferences.
New Zealand’s visitation recovery more or less matches Australia’s – the latest available figures from Tourism Research Australia cover the period to September 2024 and show an 86 per cent recovery in international arrivals.
