A run of great weather and good early-season snow conditions produced a bumper school holiday period for Queenstown Lakes district skifields this month.
In Wanaka, Cardrona Alpine Resort sales and marketing manager Nadia Ellis said the first four weeks of July - which included two weeks of Australian school holidays, followed by two weeks of holidays in New Zealand - had been among the busiest on record.
''Early snowfalls obviously got everyone really excited ... [There was] top-to-bottom skiing and great coverage over the whole mountain ... coupled with some great weather as well,'' Ms Ellis said.
Snow Farm operations manager Emma Davies said the cross-country ski area had enjoyed a ''fantastic'' school holiday period, which also seemed busier than previous years.
Skiing and biathlon youth development camps and the biathlon secondary school championships - on yesterday and today - had also boosted numbers, Miss Davies said.
Treble Cone general manager Jackie van der Voort said visitor numbers in the past fortnight were on a par with 2011 when, like this year, the school holidays had been moved to a later date than normal. Numbers were ''well up'' on other seasons over the past five years, though.
''The timing of the holidays being later certainly is working in our favour.''
Treble Cone figures also showed more visitors from Auckland than usual, Ms van der Voort said.
NZSki chief executive James Coddington said the company's two Queenstown skifields, the Remarkables and Coronet Peak, had experienced ''significantly higher'' visitor numbers in the past five weeks of Australian and New Zealand school holidays than when the two countries' holiday periods overlapped and were ''compressed'' into just two or three weeks.
Because the holidays had been much more spread out, there was not the same demand for flights and accommodation, which prevented some visitors from coming to Queenstown in other years, Mr Coddington said.
Alexandra IceInline skating rink manager Nuno Vilela said about 1500 people had skated at the rink these school holidays.
The New Zealand school term starts on Monday.
