The national carrier also announced yesterday it would offer a trial service between Christchurch, Mt Cook and Queenstown over six weeks at the peak of summer, to operate three times a week, with flights timed to connect with the direct service between Tokyo and Christchurch.
Air New Zealand's salvo came on the eve of an undisclosed "significant announcement" expected to be made today by Tourism New Zealand and Air NZ rival Jetstar.
Air New Zealand said the number of seats available each way between Queenstown and Rotorua each week would increase from about 1428 to 1818, when it switched from operating three ATR services a day between the resorts via the Garden City, to operating a Boeing 737-300 every day except Friday from November 2012 to March 2013.
The 737 service will depart Rotorua in the afternoon and Queenstown in the morning.
The airline said the planned upgrade to the 133-seater jet provided a 27% increase in capacity between Rotorua and Christchurch, plus a 14% increase between Christchurch and Queenstown.
Destination Queenstown chief executive Tony Everitt said yesterday the extra capacity was "great news" as it gave more options for travel agents to package Queenstown and Rotorua as two of New Zealand's leading visitor destinations.
"The overall number of visitors to the country has grown and we are seeing an ongoing shift towards the number of Asian visitors, just because that's where the economic prosperity is at the moment," he said.
"We know that those Asian itineraries do like to visit both Rotorua and Queenstown particularly."
