Newsletter : January 2012
Written by Steph Kendall
Welcome to the New Zealand Tourism Guide www.tourism.net.nz January 2012 issue. If you have news or comments, please email us news@tourism.net.nz.
In this January newsletter:
First Glimpse of The Hobbit Revealed
On 21st December 2011, the world had its first chance to see the long-awaited trailer for Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. Not only was it a great opportunity to try to identify some of the stars under their prosthetics, wigs and wonderful costumes, but Tourism New Zealand has seized the opportunity to piggyback the trailer with plenty of information about what visitors to New Zealand can do. The hope is that site visitors will be inspired by the New Zealand backdrops helping to create Middle Earth to view more information about:
- Driving routes
- Suggested itineraries
- Top food and wine experiences
- National Parks
- Film-relevant locations including 'Wellywood'
You can view the trailer and Tourism New Zealand webpage at, http://www.newzealand.com/int/campaign/new-zealand-home-of-middle-earth/
Online Bookings Continue to Increase in China
China has been identified as one of New Zealand's six key tourism markets and home to a new target market, 'Active Considerers'. (Active Considerers being people who are not just aware of New Zealand and interested in coming here 'some day'; they already have New Zealand on their list of preferred future holiday destinations. They are also aged over 18 and are willing to spend a minimum set amount on their holiday here.)
So it is positive news for New Zealand tourism, as latest figures show that booking travel online is becoming ever more popular in China. The rise being due in part to consumers becoming more comfortable with using the internet for big purchases and banks developing the necessary infrastructure to provide secure processing channels.
Tourism New Zealand's General Manager Asian Markets, Mark Frood says, "With one of the largest populations and fastest growing consumer markets in the world, the ability to communicate with a key growth market for tourism using targeted online activity makes sense as we work to increase visitor numbers to New Zealand."
The Numbers Game – Your Vital Statistics
Written by Steph Kendall
- People visit your website. Fact.
- Some of these people will make a booking. Fact.
- Some of these people will have come to your website directly. Fact.
- Some of these people have visited other websites that have referred them onto yours. Fact.
So far so good, right? But there's something missing here. The numbers. But here's another fact - you can find out what the numbers are – the vital statistics – for your website at no or little cost. And once you know these numbers, you can work out which of your marketing dollars – especially those paying for advertising space or listings on other websites – are actually creating revenue for your business.
Getting Hold of Website Statistics (Stats)
- Website statistics are available through your webmaster (your web guy or your web host) and all you have to do is request the URL and login details for your 'website statistics' (also called stats).
- AWStats is a commonly-used website statistics program. It is freely available and it's easy to decipher information as it is shown graphically and in clearly-labelled tables.
- If you haven't got such an easy-to-read stats program, you may want to consider setting up Google Analytics. Again this is free to use, easy to decipher and for anyone with basic knowledge of HTML straightforward and quick to install on your website. (Your web developer/designer can help you with this and the cost should be minimal).
What Your Website Statistics Can Tell You
By reviewing your website statistics, you can stop playing a 'guessing game' and look at the numbers you need to make informed decisions about your website, its content, its design and its promotion. This is what you can find out for specific time frames:
- How many people visited your website – see Unique Visitors
- How many times your site is visited (including repeat visitors) – see Visits
- How many times each web page is viewed – see Pages
- Where your visitors come from – see Origin
- Which countries your visitors are from – see Countries
- What they did when they were on the site – e.g. how long they stayed on your website, their entry and exit pages, which pages they looked at
- How they found your website – This is crucial information because you can see how people got to your website – i.e. through a search engine using certain keywords or via other referring websites.
Referring Websites
When you look at your website's statistics, you can find out how many people reached (and booked) your website via referrals or referring websites.
Referring websites may be search engines or websites such as New Zealand Tourism Guide and these would be shown in your statistics under 'Referrers' (or 'Connect to site from' or 'Origin') by their URL, e.g. www.tourism.net.nz.
This is why we consider website statistics to be your Vital Statistics. Without them, you play a guessing game which could end up costing rather than making you money. All the information you need before deciding whether to pay for a listing or advert on another website really is right at your fingertips.
Your Top Referrer
You may be surprised to see how many visitors are referred onto your website by New Zealand Tourism Guide. Well, we don't (and can't) just make this stuff up. We have worked extremely hard to produce a website resource for people in New Zealand and overseas that is easily found on search engines throughout the world. Even in the current, highly competitive online climate, New Zealand Tourism Guide www.tourism.net.nz is consistently ranked the most visited commercial tourism New Zealand directory in the last 12 month period (e.g. it has had the most number of visitors to a website). We invite you to view independently-produced Nielsen Reports with regard to our own website visitor numbers.
N.B: Different statistics programs may show different numbers as their measurements may slightly differ. However, by using your own (independent) website statistics to review and compare your website performance on a monthly basis, you will soon start to see a pattern that reflects what's happening in your business.
Top Tourism Site of the Month
This month's Top Tourism Site Award goes to Abel Tasman Sailing Adventures
Several elements of this website home page appealed to me instantly: its lovely bright colours, attractive and eye-catching photography of real people having a good time and the size of the text – perfect for computer-strained eyes! The quality of the image used on the Trip Highlights page could be improved and the font size varies almost too much on some of the interior (sub) pages, but overall this is a very attractive site that is informative and easy to navigate.
Abel Tasman Sailing Adventures offer sailing tours, scenic sailing, daily trips, catamaran charters, combination packages, sea kayaking, national park walks, water taxis, sky diving, birds, seals and dolphin sighting and more activities in and around the Abel Tasman National Park.
Nominate a Site
If you think a New Zealand travel or tourism website deserves a 'Top Tourism Site Award', let us know about it. (View further information about the award criteria.)
About the Top Tourism Site Award
The New Zealand Tourism Guide confers a Top Tourism Site Award to websites that:
- Enhance New Zealand as a travel destination
- Publish useful and informative content
- Are laid out in a professional and aesthetically-pleasing manner
- Are designed effectively for the World Wide Web
- May demonstrate easy functionality, interactivity, originality, outstanding graphic quality and marketing reach.
We welcome any feedback — send your comments to: news@tourism.net.nz
Kind regards,
The Team
Ph 0800 14 65 49
www.tourism.net.nz
New Zealand Tourism Guide
Head Office: Level One, 534 Colombo Street, Christchurch