The Ministry of Tourism has said official tourism forecasts for Queenstown and Wanaka between 2008 and 2014 were likely to "overstate the actual level of tourism" and as such would be reviewed and updated about mid-2009.
Queenstown Lakes District Council senior policy analyst Sue Mavor passed on the ministry's note of caution when she presented a report on the most recent forecast at the council's strategy committee meeting in Queenstown yesterday.
The forecast, compiled by the ministry in conjunction with Destination Queenstown and Statistics New Zealand, was published in November.
It covered total visits to Queenstown and Lake Wanaka, total visitor nights, and expenditure by origin.
In her report, Ms Mavor said that forecast indicated total visits by travellers to Queenstown could rise from 1.53 million in 2007 to 1.77 million in 2014, a 16% increase (244,900), or 2.1% per annum.
International visits were expected to rise 24.3% (229,800) from 940,200 in 2007 to 1.17 million in 2014, while domestic visits were expected to increase by 2.7% (16,000) from 586,400 to 602,400.
Total visitor nights in the Queenstown area had originally been forecast to rise from 3.48 million in 2007 to 4.08 million in 2014, an increase of 598,800 (17.2%), or 2.3% per annum.
International visitor nights were expected to increase from 2.29 million to 2.85 million, a 24.4% increase (558,400), while domestic visitor nights were forecast to rise by 3.4% (40,400), from 1.19 million to 1.23 million.
Ms Mavor said the commentary from the Tourism Leading Indicators Monitor (TLIM), published in December, provided a useful national summary of trends in tourism and what to expect in the future, which boiled down to "considerable uncertainty" both nationally and locally.
Nationally, the uncertainty stemmed from the state of the "wider macro-economic conditions".
The main economic indicators in many of New Zealand tourism's origin markets were "clearly of considerable concern".
"The three- to four-month outlook is that the sector will be soft, but not necessarily sharply affected."
The TLIM predicted international arrivals to the country would probably be down between 5% and 15%, but there would be "considerable variation" in how different markets would be affected: long-haul markets including the United Kingdom, the United States, and Asia would be most affected, while Australia and so-called visitor friends and relatives (VFR) were expected to stay strong.
The domestic travel market was considered to be large and showing resilience, and was expected to buffer the industry from lower international demand.
Operators and regions servicing Asian holiday travellers would be most affected, while operators and regions focused on Australian visitors, VFR and domestic travellers would be less affected.
The TLIM commentary said: "The longer-term outlook is of considerably more concern, with the recognition that how the global economic situation unfolds will be the main determinant of tourism activity. The key message is to expect reduced demand.
"At the sector level there was a consensus that Australian and domestic demand offered best opportunities, but not at the expense of our long-haul market."
