New Zealand’s tourists are very very happy

Buried in this MBIE report on the tourism outcome from the 2011 Rugby World cup was this chart:

The little red pice of the left hand side of the bottom bar represents the percentage of people who gave their trip to New Zealand a 5 out of 10. That’s not a great trip for them – perhaps they were not rugby fans.

But just look at the numbers of people who loved their time here. Over 40% were extremely satisfied, 65% or so gave us a 9 or 10 out of 10 and almost 90% marked New Zealand as 8 or better out of 10. And that’s for the visitors who were not here for the rugby. Those who were, despite perhaps backing a losing team, were overwhelmingly gracious about their experiences here – with about 94% over saying 8 out of 10 or better.

It was a magical time to be in New Zealand.

It’s still magical now. So come on over to visit if you don’t live here, and perhaps think about starting a business here as well.

And for the record – here is the chart of visitors to New Zealand showing the impact of the World Cup:

The sharp increase and continued growth after the pop is an astonishing turnaround from the impact of Christchurch Quakes and Chilean ash cloud, let alone the global recession.

There’s a lot more going on in New Zealand than the RWC and tourism, and I’m a huge supporter of the emerging web, tech and design led companies here in particular. Stay tuned.