‘We look at an audience that has New Zealand as their top 5 preference country’

Pre-pandemic, New Zealand welcomed 67,000 Indian visitors. What is remarkable about this, says Gregg Wafelbakker, GM, Asia, Tourism New Zealand, is that number had doubled in five years. “This translates to almost a 15% compounding annual growth rate. As we look forward, obviously we start from a low base. We have a target audience in India. We look at an audience of those who have New Zealand as their top five preference country and there’s 12.3 million of those. And we know that 12.3 million of 1.4 billion people may not seem a lot but certainly for us that is our audience. And 64% of that audience has New Zealand as the number one preferred destination for a visit,” he says.