Chinese visitors are to being enticed off their beaten New Zealand tourist trail as the South Island makes a push for a greater share of the Chinese tourism market.

The South Island's 13 regional tourism organizations have banded together with Christchurch Airport to form the South initiative, a move to expand its Asian tourism markets with a focus on China.

"We're seeing increasing numbers of Chinese visitors coming to the South Island, but we're currently getting only about 25 percent of the total 220,000 Chinese coming to New Zealand each year," South manager Dave Hawkey said.

The New Zealand government's Tourism New Zealand agency earlier this year began a program to encourage Chinese operators to promote New Zealand as a primary destination, rather than a short adjunct to an Australian holiday.

But with the vast majority of Chinese visitors arriving at Auckland, in the upper North Island, tourism providers have faced a challenge in luring them away from Auckland and the thermal resort of Rotorua.

Last month, the South appointed the South Island's first key trade representative to China, working out of Shanghai to market the South Island as a destination to Chinese tour organizers.

"We're looking to develop more tour itineraries and persuade them of the benefits of a holiday in the South Island," Hawkey said in a phone interview.

Some visitors were focused on specific areas, such as education, but "we're a touring destination first and foremost," said Hawkey.

"The South Island is easy to get around; we have the great open spaces and great food and wine," he said.

"A lot of the mature visitors are still traveling in groups, but we're getting more and more FITs (free independent travelers). The younger ones are getting into camper vans and driving around and staying in caravan parks."

The South Island still had "plenty of capacity" for more tourists and the South would be organizing a series of workshops around the island in September and October to inform tourism operators of the opportunities offered by China and to help them prepare for differences in culture and language.

"The market is definitely still growing, but there is still work to be done," he said.

Christchurch Airport already claims to be New Zealand's first " multi-lingual airport" with signage in Chinese, Japanese and Korean as well as English, but the ambition was to provide an alternative to Auckland, which currently is the country's only airport with direct links to China.

"One day, that's our aspiration to have a direct service from the Chinese mainland to Christchurch," said Hawkey.