Region leads in guest-night gains

Otago is leading the way in a continued rise in the number of visitor guest nights spent in New Zealand.

Latest accommodation figures from Statistics New Zealand show Otago guest nights were 11.1% higher last November than in November 2014.

The Waitaki District is winning in the growth stakes, with a 17.4% increase in the number of guest nights spent in the district in November last year compared with the same month in 2014.

The district hosted 33,950 people, up 5032 on November 2014.

Tourism Waitaki general manager Jason Gaskill said he had been "cautiously optimistic that this was the kind of year we were going to have''.

The tourism industry in the Waitaki district was "heading in the right direction'' due to "all the hard work people have been putting in for quite a while - operators, everybody''.

Tourism heavy-hitter Queenstown Lakes district's guest nights were up 15.6% to 344,796 for the month.

Statistics New Zealand business indicators manager Clara Eatherley said the Otago region had the largest increase in guest nights, with Queenstown and Wanaka boosting rises in guest night numbers across New Zealand.

James Helmore, from Lake Wanaka Tourism, said visitor nights for the month of November in Wanaka were up by 15% to 56,927, a record for that time of the year.

The year-on-year comparison ended November 2015 showed overall guest nights were up 9.8% to 720,261 in Wanaka.

"Anecdotally, town has been substantially busier than in previous years and these numbers affirm what our operators and local businesses have been reporting.''

Guest nights across the entire country were 4.6% higher than in the same month a year earlier.

Dunedin's 79,444 guest nights were up 2596, or 3.4%, and Clutha's total was 6305, up 344, or 5.8%.

Central Otago was the only Otago district to record a drop - it hosted 18,811 visitors, down 620, or 3.2%.

It is the 20th month in a row New Zealand guest nights have risen, with international visitors coming mainly from China, Australia, the United States, Korea and Taiwan.

The Accommodation Survey collects data on guests staying in hotels, motels, backpacker accommodation and holiday parks in New Zealand each month.

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