Industry experts believe there will be an increase in visitors but not to pre-pandemic levels.
"With the Chinese border opening, I think the initial wave would be of people travelling to meet friends and families rather than leisure travel," Enterprise Dunedin manager John Christie said.
Prior to Covid-19, China was an important and growing market.
A report released in July 2020 by Tourism New Zealand showed China was New Zealand’s second-largest market by arrivals, comprising 11% of total arrivals.
It also said Chinese visitors spent $1.7 billion in 2019, which was 15% of the total visitor spend, and, of that, $333 million was spent in the regions.
Traditionally, Chinese travel to New Zealand during summer. Tourism New Zealand said 34% of Chinese travellers visited New Zealand during summer.
Data from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s monthly regional tourism estimates, sourced from Enterprise Dunedin, showed Chinese visitors spent $29 million in Dunedin in 2019 and $21 million in 2020.
From mid-December 2019 the number of tourists visiting Dunedin started to decline.
Total international visitor spend in Dunedin for 2019 was $230 million and for 2020 it was $226 million.
Mr Christie said after the lockdown, when borders were opened globally, people travelled to meet friends and family.
"It took a while for the people to feel confident about travelling and then only leisure travel started."
He hoped a similar thing would happen with the Chinese visitors.
"Leisure travel will start in the later stages."
It was important for the tourism sector in Dunedin to be able to attract more Chinese visitors by increasing the airline capacity and connectivity, Mr Christie said.
Answering a query on the expected number of Chinese customers this year, an Air New Zealand spokesman said: "Unfortunately, we don’t have a figure for this. As border restrictions are softening, we expect to see an uplift in Chinese visitors across the country but it’s too early to know what kind of numbers."
While in 2019 the airline had more than 500 customers flying from China into Dunedin, last year the number was about 100.
"These figures are for those customers who booked China-Dunedin on the same ticket," the spokesman said.
"Please note there may be more than this as passengers could have booked their own way to Dunedin either via a separate domestic ticket or travelled via road from another port," the airline said in an email.
To a query on international connectivity to Dunedin Airport, Dunedin Airport general manager business development Megan Crawford said, "We have connections to Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland, which therefore allows for international visitors arriving into NZ to connect on to other flights to arrive into Dunedin.
"We currently have around 15 arriving flights a day, according to the schedules we are currently operating with."
Otago Peninsula Trust ecotourism manager Hoani Langsbury said he expected an increase in the number of Chinese travellers.
Many Chinese came in family groups which included extended family members.
Motel Association president and operator of Great King Motel Pete Firns said he had personally not seen an increase in the number of inquiries from Chinese customers.
Destination Queenstown chief executive Mat Woods also expected there would be people visiting friends and family but said there were not that many flights from China to New Zealand at the moment and DQ did not expect to see many Chinese visitors for at least three or four months.
Asked whether he expected an increase to pre-Covid levels, he said Chinese travellers were gravitating towards smaller groups and independent travel rather than the larger tour groups seen previously.
"We don’t envisage seeing visitors from mainland China until April as flights start to increase and visitor visas are processed."
Asked whether staff shortages faced by many businesses would affect the visitor experience, he said the Government
had doubled working holiday visas for China from 1000 to 2000 this year, which was a great boost.
"Our visitor sentiment is tracking positively, which tells us that Queenstown continues to deliver amazing experiences. We understand that the Chinese market is really interested in sustainability experiences and this is an area that is really growing in Queenstown," he said.
