Boats shore up visitor revenue

International visitors spent $233 million this past year in Dunedin - a spike of almost 6% compared with the prior year - on the back of an influx of cruise ship passengers into the city.

The latest statistics from Infometrics credit the passing cruise passenger trade in the main, as there were fewer people spending the night in commercial accommodation.

Formal guests in the city fell 4.6% for the year, which reflected an overall softening in international visitor numbers, the report said.

Enterprise Dunedin director John Christie said while numbers were off overall, the city's tourism lifeline was still its local visitors, which were up 3.4% over the past year.

That largely reflected numbers coming to the Fleetwood Mac concert at Forsyth Barr stadium, he said.

Another positive indicator was the declining unemployment rate, which had dropped from 5.8% to 4.6% over the year to September, contrary to the country's average unemployment rate which had increased to 4.2%.

"It's heartening to see Dunedin's falling unemployment rate closing the gap with the national average.

"Competition for workers remains high all over the country, and we all need to be aware of this as we prepare for many large projects in the city and our region."

He said that while the city had a rise in numbers of beneficiaries overall, the Dunedin increase of 0.8% between September 2018 and 2019 was below that of all the major urban areas, and the New Zealand average of 5.3%.

"It's the same with the number of 18-24-year-old people receiving Jobseeker Support in Dunedin. The local rise in the year ending September 2019 of 4.5% above its 2018 level, is much less than the national increase of 14% over the same period."