Air New Zealand Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Ralph Norris said today with added air capacity, lower airfares and joint promotion New Zealand could be grown into one of WA’s biggest tourist markets over the next few years.
Speaking in Perth to promote Air New Zealand’s expansion into WA with an increase to daily direct services between Perth and Auckland over summer, Mr Norris said WA’s profile in New Zealand as a tourist destination had grown substantially in recent years.
“Inbound tourism to WA from New Zealand has grown by nine per cent in the last year alone and is now over the 40,000 annual visitors mark,” he said.
“New Zealand tourists are also one of the most frequent repeat visitor groups to WA and are also trending towards longer stays in WA with visitor nights up 22.6 per cent in the last financial year.”
Air New Zealand currently flies four direct services a week between Perth and Auckland. The airline will increase to daily non-stop flights from 1 November to 28 March for the busy summer period, providing an additional 25,000 seats on the route.
Mr Norris said outbound tourism from WA into New Zealand was also a major instigator the airline’s decision to expand its schedule to a daily service with WA visitors to New Zealand now over 49,000 in number, an increase of 12.5 per cent in the year ending July 04.
“We’d definitely like to see Air New Zealand continuing to expand in this market over the next few years and believe we’ve put very competitive airfares in place to support future growth,” he said.
Air New Zealand had moved over the last 12 months to slash airfares and remove the complexity of conditions such as Saturday night stays and advance booking requirements to increase traffic between Australia and New Zealand.
“We’ve lowered our fares out of Perth for example by 23 per cent, with a year round return airfare to New Zealand from Perth now starting at $835 return including taxes which has helped grow the market,” Mr Norris said.
Air New Zealand commenced flying into Perth in 1981 and is the only airline to offer direct non-stop service between Perth and Auckland.
Utilising 767-300 aircraft, Air New Zealand’s daily services will depart Perth at 6.45 pm arriving into Auckland at 6.00 am with a flight time of 6 hours and 15 minutes. The return flight departs Auckland at 3.05pm, arriving into Perth at 5.30 pm with a flight time of 7 hours and 25 minutes.
The daily services will also connect through to our domestic network of 25 destinations across the North and South Islands, and our popular Pacific Island and USA routes.
For more information and bookings visit Air New Zealand at www.airnewzealand.com.au or call 13 24 76.
