There were 319,000 visitor arrivals to New Zealand in December 2006, the highest number recorded for any month, Statistics New Zealand said Friday.

This is up 4 percent on the 307,100 visitor arrivals in December 2005, and 2 percent more than the previous high of 313, 100 in December 2004.

More visitors arriving from Australia, the United Kingdom and China contributed to the increase, said Statistics New Zealand.

It said there is a continuing decline in visitor numbers from Japan, with 13 percent fewer arrivals in December 2006 than in the same month of 2005.

In the year ended December 2006, there were 2.422 million visitor arrivals, up 2 percent from that of December 2005.

There were more visitors from Australia (up 28,800), China (up 17,900) and the United States of America (up 11,100), but fewer from Japan (down 18,500) and the United Kingdom (down 12,000).

Tourism Minister Damien O'Connor said he was delighted with statistics showing more people visited New Zealand last year than ever before.

"The government and the tourism industry are in the process of updating our highly successful tourism strategy, to adapt to a changing world market, and such a strong overall result will act as a real confidence booster," said O'Connor.

Source: Xinhua