Glaciers in New Zealand
Maori children
Northland, New Zealand
Queen Charlotte Sound
Routeburn Track
Boating in Taupo
Tongariro, New Zealand
Wellington, New Zealand

Newsletter : July 2006

brought to you by New Zealand Tourism Online www.tourism.net.nz

NZTO Comment

by Garry Bond, General Manager, New Zealand Tourism Online

The Tourism Industry Conference is being held in Wellington starting on the 21st August 2006. This year the theme is 'Strengthening the present...developing the future'. The conference aims to shape the future of the tourism industry in New Zealand, which is great, but this will need to have the support of all stakeholders to become a reality. This includes local bodies and councils around the country as they help provide the infrastructure to support the tourism industry.

An example of how a council can hinder a tourism operator was highlighted recently when I became aware of a sailing operation that was having trouble gaining access to their yacht for their paying clients. The main issue was the poor condition of the wharves, the general lack of repair and the reluctance of the local authority to do anything about it. With OSH rules these days, this also meant that effectively there was no-where for their clients to board the yacht safely, thus dramatically reducing that tourism operators ability to provide a service, and make it profitable enough to continue in business.

This particular case may be an isolated incident but as an operator how do you rate your local body or council? In your experience are they supportive? Do they provide good services and infrastructure? Are the streets tidy? How do you think a visitor would view or rate your area? I have included a quick survey below and would like to get your opinion.

I'd imagine however, that as a tourism operator, you'd agree that no matter how professionally your business is presented, if the street frontage or amenities etc in the surrounding area aren't up to scratch, the visitor is likely to have a lower opinion of their experience overall. And that's something that's often out of your immediate control.

On a lighter note, we have our fingers (and toes) crossed that the judges look favourably upon us again in the Tourism Award finals. Winners to be announced at the Tourism Industry Conference Gala dinner on the 23rd August 2006. We'll keep you posted.

TOURISM AWARDS VOTING

Just a quick reminder that voting finishes for the Telecom Peoples Choice Tourism Award at the end of July 2006 and New Zealand Tourism Online is a nominee.

TIANZ organise the event and nominees have contributed towards a $12,000 tourism and travel prize package. This year the voting can be by texting your vote (20 cents) or voting online (free). It's open to New Zealanders who are 18 years or older.

If you believe we are a worthy candidate then feel free to vote. For more details about all nominees as well as the terms and conditions please visit the Tourism Awards Web site.

LOCAL BODY/COUNCIL Survey

Continuing on from the editorial, New Zealand Tourism Online would like to conduct a quick informal survey. How do you rate your local body or council in terms of their support for the tourism in your area and for the infrastructure that's already in place. Are visitors are likely to have a pleasant visit or stay?

Ratings options: 1=excellent, 2=very good, 3=ok, 4= fair, 5=poor

Here's the two questions. Simply click the links below and send us an email with your rating.

1. Support: How supportive is your local body or council? Click here

2. Infrastructure: How do you rate the infrastructure in your area? Click here

We will publish the results next month.

Top 10 Tips on Using Web Site Statistics

by Avatar Web Promotions

Site statistics are one of the most useful tools for measuring and understanding the performance of your Web site. Typically, Web site statistics provide a detailed report on the performance of a Web site, which can be analysed on a daily and monthly basis (the level and type of reporting will differ between programmes).

Site statistics reporting generally includes (but is not limited to) the following aspects:

  • Unique visitors - Number of individuals / unique computers' browsers who have visited your Web site (only counted once).
  • Number of visits - Total number of distinct visits to your Web site (starting with an entry click and ending with an exit click).
  • Pages viewed per visit - Number of Web pages viewed through a browser by a person.
  • Hits - A hit is a request from a browser for a single item from a Web server, so in order for a Web browser to display one page containing three graphics, four hits would occur at the server (one for the HTML page and three for the graphics).
  • Bandwidth used - Amount of data transferred.
  • Visits Duration - The amount of time that people are staying on your site.
  • Referring URLs - The pages that people visit prior to coming to your Web site / page (these may be external Web sites including search engines).
  • Search Phrases - The keyword phrases or keywords people are using to get to your Web site via search engines.

Here are our top 10 tips to ensure you're getting the most out of your site stats:

  1. Check you can both easily retrieve and understand the data generated by your statistics programme.
  2. Check you are using the same method of measurement over time in order to produce results that are the most useful for purposes of comparison (i.e. don't switch between statistics programmes and expect the results to be consistent).
  3. Check that you are consistently tracking the right set of results. If you're keeping an eye on the number of unique visitors, don't switch to tracking hits because your results will get skewed.
  4. Hits are not the same as visits! If you want to know how many people are visiting your site, look at the number of unique visits or visitors, not hits.
  5. Record your statistics in a spreadsheet or database not provided by your Web host. This is especially important if your online statistical data is limited to recording a set number of months and you want to track your site's performance over a number of years.
  6. Remember that whilst statistics reports are unlikely to ever be 100% accurate, the measurement of trends is still very useful.
  7. Use statistical data in conjunction with other sources of information about your business performance to flesh out the 'real' picture.
  8. Use your statistics to help you improve the stickiness of your site, which as the name suggests means getting your site visitor to stay on your site for longer and encouraging them to come back again.
  9. Look at your conversion rate together with your site statistics. It may be whilst the number of visits to your site remains fairly consistent the quality of your visits has improved, i.e. your site is getting visited by people genuinely interested in what your site is offering.
  10. If you haven't started tracking your site's performance, why not start now? Schedule in a regular time slot, at least once a month, to review and record your stats.

Site statistics programmes are generally provided by a hosting service. If you don't know how to access your site statistics, contact your host.

We welcome any feedback - send your comments to : news@tourism.net.nz

Regards,

The Team
Ph 0800 14 65 49
https://www.tourism.net.nz
New Zealand Tourism Online Limited
Head Office: 208 Cashel Street, Christchurch

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