Tourism New Zealand is not spending enough to attract Chinese tourists to New Zealand, a major tourism buyer says.
Tourism NZ launched a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign in Shanghai in April, but Darline Liu, a spokeswoman for a leading Internet-based Chinese travel company, said the money did not go far enough.
The $7 million Tourism NZ spent in Shanghai was not quite enough, she said at the Trenz tourism conference in Rotorua this week.
New Zealand should be spending much more to promote the country in China.
"I think funding should be enlarged. While the campaign helped improve knowledge of New Zealand in Shanghai, in [a] large population centre such as Beijing, that knowledge of New Zealand was almost non-existent.
"Chinese do not know much about New Zealand," Ms Liu said.
With increasing airline fuel costs and concern over the global credit crunch, the Chinese market has been touted as one that could help save a jittery tourism industry.
Air New Zealand international airline group general manager Ed Sims said China was an expensive market.
The media costs were extraordinary, he said.
Research by Tourism NZ before the campaign showed Chinese awareness of New Zealand was very low.
Tourism NZ chief executive George Hickton said New Zealand "needs to be up there now, while the market is still in its growth stages, to ensure we grab the attention of these kind of travellers".
A new 100% Pure New Zealand campaign in Shanghai will use a mixture of television commercials, outdoor billboards and the Internet to show New Zealand to an increasingly wealthy market.
China became New Zealand's fourth-largest tourism market, surpassing Japan, in January this year.
