A surge in arrivals drove a new annual record for Chinese visitors to New Zealand in the year ending in January, the country's government statistics agency said Monday.
In the year ending January 31st, the number of Chinese visitors increased by 13.8 percent to 422,256, keeping China's rank as New Zealand's second biggest source of visitors, after Australia.
Scenes and food of New Zealand /CFP Photos
Chinese visitor numbers in the month of January were up 32.4 percent year-on-year, with over 54,000 visitors from China arriving in New Zealand that month, official data show.
"The strong increase in visitor arrivals in January 2017 coincided with the Chinese New Year," population statistics senior manager Peter Dolan said in a statement.
Meanwhile, total visitor numbers were up 11 percent year-on-year to 3.54 million in the year ending January, according to Statistics New Zealand.
(Some reporting courtesy Xinhua.)
