New Zealand's tourism-related businesses have lost confidence this year, after coming off a high in the second half of 2011, the Ministry of Economic Development said Wednesday.

The ministry's Tourism Industry Monitor showed business confidence dropped to 60 in the March quarter, down from a record high of 144 in the September 2011 quarter, and 107 in the December 2011 quarter.

Index values of lower than 100 indicated more pessimists than optimists.

Ministry tourism research and evaluation manager Peter Ellis said the Rugby World Cup, which drew 90,000 overseas visitors in September and October, had buoyed optimism in the industry.

"Tourism businesses reported a record high in confidence in the September 2011 quarter because of the Rugby World Cup. Now that it 's over, we are seeing a decline in confidence as well as other factors, such as expected demand and profitability," said Ellis in a statement.

"The Tourism Industry Monitor for this quarter shows that the tourism industry expects demand to fall 3.6 percent and profitability to drop by 3.3 percent over the next three months. Global economic conditions, the international visitor market and the exchange rate were the main concerns cited by the tourism businesses."

The majority of the 483 industry survey respondents also indicated that their business performance was in line with their expectations in the past three months.

The Tourism Industry Monitor was published the same day the government statistics agency announced a year-on-year drop in overseas visitors in February.

Overseas visitor arrivals numbered 259,100, down 3 percent from February 2011, according to Statistics New Zealand.

"Visitor arrivals decreased despite February having an extra day this year," population statistics manager Andrea Blackburn said in a statement.

"The decrease was partly due to the Chinese New Year holiday period being in January in 2012 as opposed to February in 2011."

Fewer visitors arrived from Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland in February because of the earlier Chinese New Year, and fewer visitors came from the United Kingdom and Japan.

More visitors arrived from Australia due to an increase in visits by Australia-based New Zealand citizens.

Visitor arrivals in the year to the end of February numbered 2. 59 million, up 2 percent from 2011, with the largest annual increases in arrivals from Australia, China and Malaysia.

Tourism New Zealand chief executive Kevin Bowler said that while the early Chinese New Year celebrations this year resulted fewer arrivals in February, January saw a record number of visitor arrivals.

"The flip side of having a record January is that February is down on last year when Chinese New Year was celebrated in February, " said Bowler in a statement.

"But the market does present growth, with combined arrivals for January and February confirming arrivals from China were up 6,100, a growth of 18.7 percent against the same months of 2011."

Australian arrivals are up 2,000 for the month, with 3.5 percent growth in holiday arrivals.

"While overall holiday arrivals were down 5.8 percent against February 2011, the growth in holiday arrivals from our traditional markets is positive with Germany up 4.1 percent, Canada up 3 percent and France up 4 percent for the month."

Holiday arrivals from Asia also continued to grow with Singapore up 28 percent, Korea up 21.4 percent and Malaysia up 122. 7 percent against the same month last year, he said.

"The growth in arrivals from Malaysia reinforces the untapped demand from this region," said Bowler.

"It is clear that South Asia represents strong growth opportunities. We will continue to promote New Zealand alongside the travel trade and airlines servicing these really important markets to ensure convenient connections to New Zealand are maintained for potential visitors," he said.