While traveling in New Zealand I have met so many tourists that it seems that there are more tourists there than locals. Well, this is not so true. In order to investigate more on this subject I searched for data about domestic and international tourists in New Zealand, and I found some interesting numbers. Here I will present data taken from the Ministry of Tourism research.

This is an interesting comparison of how many International tourists spend in NZ, versus Domestic tourists.

What I found is that International tourists spent in 2008 in total 6,162 millions New Zealand dollars, while Domestic tourists spent in 2008 in total 7,413 millions NZD. So this data shows clearly that kiwis spend 1,251 million NZD more than international tourists in 2008! Which means that my initial impression was wrong. But when talking in millions of dollars this difference is not so big and the numbers are comparable so it is evident that traveling in NZ you’ll meet almost as much tourists as you’ll meet kiwis (and here I mean the people and not the birds, the birds are much more difficult to see).
If I started with numbers I will also show here tourists from what countries spend the most money in NZ:

4. In the fourth place is Japan. Japanese people spent $419,000,000 NZD in 2008 in NZ.

3. Next go United States of America. Americans spent $627,000,000 NZD.
2. United Kingdom takes the silver its citizens spent $952,000,000 NZD.
1. And the first honorable place, unsurprisingly, goes to… Australia !

Auzzies spend total of $1,699,000,000 NZD in 2008! Almost twice as much as UK! Well, it can be explained by many reasons, main reason in my opinion being the short distance between Australia and New Zealand. The flight between these two countries takes only 5 hours.

For the season of 2009 I wish everybody to have a great vacation in New Zealand, and don’t spend too much money

Related posts:

1. Easy Access Walks of the South Island of New Zealand

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