Indications from tourism operators suggest up to 2000 visitors may have cancelled visits to this country because of swine flu fears, an industry representative says.
The loss of business due to the illness is a tough blow for an industry already struggling in the wake of global economic recession.
Yesterday Southern Travel Holdings reported the cancellation of nearly 700 Japanese bookings in the past week due to swine flu fears.
As a result, expectations of a break even result for the year to the end of June have now given way to predictions by the company for a loss.
Air New Zealand said there had been a number of passenger cancellations, primarily on Japanese routes, due to concerns over swine flu, although the financial impact to the airline was not material at this stage.
Long haul passenger numbers fell 12 percent in April on the same month last year, including a 14 percent fall on the Asia/Japan/United Kingdom routes.
In another indication of the stresses confronting the industry, figures out today from Statistics New Zealand (SNZ) show a fall of 11 percent in the number of guest nights spent in short-term commercial accommodation during March compared to a year earlier.
SNZ drew attention to the timing of Easter in April this year, rather than March as in 2008, but it could not quantify the impact.
Inbound Tour Operators Council chief executive Paul Yeo said the data from March and April were usually viewed together, to remove the Easter effect.
But he acknowledged that even once that was done the figures for the combined two-month period would still be down.
The industry was not expecting to see an improvement in business until later in the year, although it was possible that if there were good snow falls there could be something of a boost over winter, Mr Yeo said.
Some operators had told him they had good forward bookings for the ski season, although those could "evaporate" if snow did not arrive.
On the issue of cancellations due to swine flu, he said it was hard to know the total number but it was probably between 1000 and 2000.
Many school groups from Japan were due to come to this country in the next few months, and that was the market affected by cancellations.
"The Japan school excursion market is quite a big one, a lot of school kids go out of Japan each year and make visits to different countries," Mr Yeo said.
"The Japanese market is incredibly conservative and they are very wary." He was hopeful that with concerns about swine flu moderating, the impact would not be long lasting.
After the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) global outbreak in 2003, the market bounced back quickly and strongly, he said.
"We're just riding it out. We know what happened last time and if the same thing happens, we're very confident that it will be just an unfortunate blip." A little more optimism was creeping into the industry than was the case a month ago.
