Queenstown Lakes Mayor Vanessa van Uden will sign a sister city agreement with the Chinese city of Hangzhou next month.
The October 16 signing will be the culmination of a two-year effort by the Queenstown Chamber of Commerce to form a partnership with a Chinese city and promote opportunities for local businesses, chief executive Ann Lockhart says.
Although it was mainly a civic visit, and Ms van Uden would attend two mayoral forums, other members of the delegation would be ''proactively looking to develop business opportunities'', Ms Lockhart said.
''We see a lot of synergy with Hangzhou. It is the largest area for domestic tourism in China, it's a very affluent town and very pretty.
''We see opportunities for us around tourism and film.''
She was ''delighted'' the agreement was being formalised less than a year since a 12-strong delegation of tourism, council, education, wine and film industry representatives travelled to Hangzhou.
It also follows last month's signing in Queenstown of a memorandum of understanding between the chamber and Hangzhou's Municipal Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation Bureau.
A tourism-based city of 8.3 million, Hangzhou has 80 million domestic visitors a year - the most among Chinese cities.
Like Queenstown it sits by a lake - West Lake, a Unesco World Heritage site.
It will be Hangzhou's first sister-city relationship in New Zealand, adding to 23 other such partnerships it has around the world.
Ms Lockhart said she, chamber president Charlie Phillips and Destination Queenstown chief executive Graham Budd would accompany Ms van Uden and her husband on the three-day visit.
Some China-based representatives of Queenstown companies were likely to join the delegation.
Queenstown Lakes District Council communications manager Michele Poole said Ms van Uden's husband would accompany the mayor ''in his private capacity and at their own expense''.
