Tourism funding boost welcomed

Tourism industry leaders say a funding injection announced by Prime Minister John Key today will allow more work to be done on attracting people from new markets while maintaining a presence in existing ones.

Tourism New Zealand is getting $25 million to sell New Zealand to visitors during the lead up to the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Mr Key, who is also tourism minister, made the announcement in a speech to the New Zealand Hotel Industry conference in Auckland this morning and said there would also be $5m more for regional tourism organisation joint venture initiatives with Tourism New Zealand.

Tourism Industry Association chief executive Tim Cossar said the funding injection was a vote of confidence in the future of New Zealand tourism.

"At this stage, the additional $30m is for one year. So the industry will have to prove that we can use it to keep building the contribution tourism makes to New Zealand," Mr Cossar said.

He said he was confident that would be achieved and the industry had already shown good work was being done in developing public-private joint ventures with the use of existing funding.

The New Zealand Hotel Council has also welcomed the commitment, along with Totally Tourism, whose managing director Mark Quickfall said it would strengthen existing marketing efforts and allow the industry to better pursue new markets.

"The current level of funding limits the industry to putting most of its focus on traditional, proven markets. But this will mean we can do more work to promote New Zealand to new and emerging markets and find innovative ways to get our message out there," he said.

Mr Key said the increase in funding took the investment in tourism to almost $100m this year.

A campaign targeted at Australia had been effective and the new money would be used to focus on markets like China, Europe and the United States.