The red carpet will be rolled out when 70 Chinese delegates experience Queenstown tomorrow, after arriving in Auckland on Saturday on China Southern Airlines' inaugural New Zealand flight.
Airline VIPs, Chinese media and representatives from Chinese outbound tourism organisations will play golf at Millbrook, ride the Shotover Jet, lunch at Botswana Butchery, cruise on the historic TSS Earnslaw and take a trip to Arrowtown.
The group will meet Wakatipu tourism operators and business people at a gala dinner in Millbrook, hosted by Queenstown Airport, Auckland Airport and Destination Queenstown.
China Southern Airlines is the fourth-largest airline in the world and the biggest in Asia. Its new alliance with Auckland Airport will add 68,000 seats on a direct route to New Zealand from the major southern China city of Guangzhou.
Queenstown Airport chief executive Steve Sanderson said the resort's challenge was to attract new arrivals from Guangzhou.
DQ chief executive Tony Everitt said the new thrice-weekly links to Auckland provided valuable additional capacity from Guangzhou province, a catchment of 90 million of some of China's wealthiest citizens.
China Southern Airlines has spent almost $10 million promoting New Zealand as a tourism destination for Chinese travellers. China was New Zealand's fourth-largest visitor market after Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, but it was the fastest growing and predicted to take the number two or three spot eventually.
