At yesterday's Queenstown Lakes District Council strategy committee meeting, DQ chief executive Tony Everitt said visitors to the resort last year spent about $800 million, a slight improvement on 2009.
"Therefore we believe that Destination Queenstown's target of $1 billion from visitor spend by 2015 is achievable, and it it represents about 4 or 5% compound per annum growth over the next four years."
He presented the data as part of the tourism monitoring and prediction report for the committee.
The increase in visitors to Queenstown by 2016 is expected to be up 12.8% from 2009, and 8.4% for Wanaka, and Mr Everitt said DQ was exploring opportunities for more flights to the resort, and also looking at new Asian markets.
It would maintain its focus on the core markets of the Australian eastern seaboard and New Zealand domestic tourism, he said.
Although guest nights for Queenstown were up 9.3% last year, the Canterbury earthquake resulted in cancellations in the September-October period, which was down 0.8% on October the previous year, but performing better than the national total ( down 2%) and the South Island total (down 11%).
Mr Everitt said these cancellations were particularly from risk-sensitive Asian markets and DQ would have to work with Christchurch Tourism to ensure northern-hemisphere markets were not discouraged from visiting, as well.
" [It is] less for Australians, who can see they can fly to Christchurch, or fly to Queenstown."
But it was unlikely northern-hemisphere visitors would visit only Queenstown.
"If they don't feel confident to coming to Christchurch, they won't come to Queenstown, either," Mr Everitt said.
With the projected increase in visitors to the area, the subject of how much tourists cost ratepayers was raised by Cr Lex Perkins.
"We are a tourist-driven town, there's no doubt about that.
"I just hope it does keep going up, but it does put tremendous pressure on this council that supplies services for us ...
"Do we do a study on how much money we offer tourists through rates?
"How much do the tourists cost us annually for roading, sewerage and infrastructure?" he asked.
The committee agreed that further discussion on the matter should take place this year.
Fewer NZ visitors expected
While overall tourist visits to the Queenstown and Wanaka areas are predicted to increase by 2016, the number of nights domestic visitors stay is expected to drop.
Domestic visitor nights to Queenstown are forecast to drop by 1.2% (11,000 over five years), while Wanaka is expected to see 2.7% fewer visitors and is already showing very low occupancy levels.
When DQ chief executive Tony Everitt announced the figures at yesterday's QLDC strategy committee meeting, Cr Cath Gilmore asked why there would be such a big loss in such an important tourism market, and what could be done to turn it around.
Mr Everitt said the downturn, which was relatively small considering the numbers were spread over a five-year period, could be partially explained by the state of the New Zealand economy.
"It is partly an extrapolation of what's happening at the moment, of what's happened over the last two or three years.
"The domestic market is soft ... and the reason it's soft is because New Zealanders don't have the discretionary income ... they've enjoyed over the last decade [due to growth]."
The Wanaka occupancy levels provided by Statistics New Zealand in Wanaka, which showed a fall from 24% to 18.7% in October 2010 compared with October 2009, did not include all of the hospitality operators in the resort, Mr Everitt said.
