New Zealand needs to tap in Chinese tourists to keep its tourism momentum going

Monday, February 25, 2019

This was supposed to be the China-New Zealand Year of Tourism, but the celebration appears to be off. Chinese tourists were having second thoughts about traveling to New Zealand due to hints that its government might bar Huawei Technologies Co. from the country’s next-generation wireless networks. However, Wellington has said that the door isn’t closed to the company. A senior official at China CYTS Tours Holding Co. Ltd., said that about the decision-making process: “How warmly a country treats tourists could also affect Chinese citizens’ choices of travel destinations.”

As countries from Palau to South Korea have learned the hard way, the Chinese government isn’t shy to divert its tourists and their thick pocketbooks whenever it wants to make a political point. The economic consequences can be devastating for tourist-dependent economies.

Within the last few years, China has become the world’s largest market for outbound tourism, with its citizens taking nearly 150 million trips abroad in 2018. For a tourism-dependent economy like New Zealand, 6 percent of GDP is derived directly from travel and tourism and the Chinese are the second-largest group of inbound tourists after Australians, and thus a boost in terms of Chinese tourists can be economically essential.

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