Total visitor arrivals fell steeply in February 2020, down 45,200 (11 percent) to 372,700 when compared with February 2019 – the biggest drop in arrival numbers for any February month on record, Stats NZ said today.
“This was mostly driven by the large drop in visitor arrivals from China in February, resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak travel restrictions imposed at the start of the month,” population indicators manager Tehseen Islam said.
Visitor arrivals from China plummeted by 45,900 (90 percent) in February. Before the travel restrictions were imposed, China had been New Zealand’s second-largest source of visitor arrivals on an annual basis, behind Australia. With this drop, China slipped behind the United States, which is now the second-largest source of visitor arrivals.
“There were still five thousand visitor arrivals from China in February. Most of these visitors arrived in New Zealand via other countries rather than directly from China,” Mr Islam said.
New Zealand’s borders were closed to almost all visitor arrivals just before midnight on 19 March 2020. The number of flights in and out of New Zealand has reduced significantly in recent weeks.
“Visitor arrivals fell in February, and provisional weekly figures into March show arrivals dropping dramatically as travel restrictions increased worldwide,” Mr Islam said.
While this release is for February, we have provisional data going into March that shows the most up-to-date figures available.
| Week ended | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 (final) | 2020 (provisional) |
