While international ``guest nights'' increased 17% to 171,739 in the past financial year, domestic nights fell 15% to 234,124 nights, according to Commercial Accommodation Monitor data included in the Waitaki District Council-controlled organisation Tourism Waitaki's annual report, tabled at the council meeting on Wednesday.
But Tourism Waitaki general manager Jason Gaskill said it was more important to focus on the roughly 7% or $11million increase in tourist spending that occurred last year.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's data shows tourists spent $175million in the Waitaki district in the past financial year, compared with $164million the year before.
That statistic showed ``the industry itself here is growing, and it's grown quite significantly over the last few years,'' he said.
Further the Commercial Accommodation Monitor data was a self-reporting measure for accommodation providers that did not include campers, campgrounds or ``things like AirBnb, those types of services''.
``As those grow in popularity, they're not going to be captured by that monitor,'' he said.
``That's just one tool to measure movements in and out; it doesn't necessarily capture everything that's going on here, particularly the bus movements through the day, which anecdotally are running much higher than possibly they have in the past.
``We don't get too caught up on trying to calculate the total gross visitor numbers to the region, just because it's complicated.''
Bed nights were consistently in the 410,000-a year to 430,000-a year range and the focus was to ``build and develop a more responsive environment for the visiting public''.
At the council meeting, councillors heard the proximity of next year's Trenz conference - to be held in Dunedin - would benefit the region with delegates, ``national media and international buyers'', spending more time in the wider area.
The organisation also received criticism from some councillors for being too ``Oamaru-centric'' in its approach.
``I think there's always a risk around the primary centres in any district or in any region becoming, in some people's opinions, overly represented,'' Mr Gaskill said after the meeting. ``We are trying very, very hard and working very hard to make sure that we represent the district as a whole.''
