Newsletter : December 2012
Written by Steph Kendall
Welcome to the New Zealand Tourism Guide www.tourism.net.nz December 2012 issue. If you have news or comments, please email us news@tourism.net.nz.
In this December newsletter:
Weather and Hobbit Obsessed?
TVNZ Breakfast made international headlines with its Elvish weather forecast, "Calan vain, Ennor! Sí abgen edregol an i Laer ovol" by host Tamati Coffey. The forecast confirmed that 'they appear fair the lands, and a season good for travellers.' Tourism New Zealand's Chief Executive Kevin Bowler said broadcasting the forecast as the weather of Middle-Earth reinforces TNZ's 100% Middle-earth, 100% Pure New Zealand campaign.
Other promotions happening around the release of the first Hobbit film on 12th December included:
- Air New Zealand's 'An Unexpected Briefing' safety video
- Arriving at the 'Gateway of Middle-earth' at Auckland Airport
- Wellington, dubbed as the Middle of Middle-earth, where visitors can see a 40-foot Gollum diving for fish at Wellington Airport and visit the Embassy Theatre which has been transformed into Bag End for the premiere
- New Zealand Post's release of the world's only legal tender coins of Middle-earth
- Post can be sent with Middle-earth stamps postmarked from Middle-earth.
If you missed it, click onto the Elvish summer forecast here.
A Right Royal Tour of New Zealand
As part of Queen Elizabeth II's diamond jubilee celebrations, Prince Charles and wife, Camilla recently completed a 6-day tour of the country visiting Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and Feilding. Tourism New Zealand capitalised on the opportunity to issue a guide on the most luxurious accommodation to key media in the UK. The guide also covered the variety of accessible 'luxury' experiences that can be found throughout the country, with tips on where to find boutique beach escapes, mountain retreats and the best indulgent extras after a day enjoying New Zealand's beautiful scenery and landscapes.
The resulting coverage included images of the featured accommodation, mentioned nearby activities and linked readers back to Tourism New Zealand's consumer site newzelaand.com for more information on how they too can travel like a Royal while in New Zealand.
Check out the links below:
- The Sun (Circulation 2.4 million)
- Female First (Users: 3.5 million)
- Male Xtra (Users: 1.1 million)
- Teen First (Users: 400,000)
Some royal experiences can be mimicked without the big budget as their tour also included a sporting stadium, Devonport, Queen's Wharf and Skycity (Auckland), a visit around Christchurch CBD and a farmer's market in Feilding. If you are interested in promoting your business on the back of the royals, why not find out more about Royal Tours in New Zealand.
Making Mystery Shopping Work for Your Business
Written by Steph Kendall
By finding out what a customer's experience is of your business and of your competitors, you can improve your customer services, operations, sales and ultimately, your profits. Using mystery (or secret) shopping is not just the preserve of large corporates with big budgets, you can set up a mystery shopping programme of your own with little financial outlay.
Benefits from a Mystery Shopping Programme
You can:
- find out how your employees treat your customers when you are not around
- get an independent opinion on your business
- see out how smooth certain aspects of your business operation are
- get an insight into customer's perception about your business
- find out if your product and pricing are appealing to customers
- measure the effectiveness of your staff training and performance
- learn if your competitors are doing a better job at sales, service, marketing and operations.
If you are prepared to take notice of the results of your mystery shopping programme and take action based on the feedback, you can improve the way your business runs. Set yourself up to learn from what other companies are doing well and use mystery shopping as a tool to measure customer experience on a regular basis, you can keep operating standards consistently high.
Setting Up Your Mystery Shopping Programme
Before you put your mystery shopper to work, there are a few things to consider:
- Work out what you want to find out about your business (overall customer experience, reasons for falling sales, staff behaviour, etc).
- Decide who your mystery shopping programme should investigate (your own company, other competitors).
- Decide how often you want to use mystery shopping and what methods you want to use (onsite visits/experiences, online or telephone interactions, video or audio recordings, or a mixtures of all these methods).
- Find your mystery shopper. You can be your own mystery shopper, ask a trusted friend or family member or ask your own customers. (You can offer free admission as an incentive for them to participate).
- Set up a mystery shopper tasklist, so you can compare results easily. For example, you may include a list of 25 things you want them to look out for. Provide a survey form so they can report back to you in a standardised format. Make it easy for shoppers to return information to you via email, snail mail or fax.
- Consider whether you want your staff to know about the programme at implementation or at a future date. It may initially skew results if they know about a programme too soon, but later, you could use the mystery shopping programme to help you reward exceptional service or offer objective feedback about operations.
Sample Tasklist
You may not be able to test everything about your business in one go. Tailor your questions around the information you need (business presentation, website marketing, customer service, etc). The basic tasklist can include yes/no answers, but be sure to allow for more detail e.g. if the bathrooms were not well-presented, what was the problem? No soap, jamming toilet roll dispensers, dirty floors, etc. This level of detail enables you to better address any problems.
Sales / Bookings
- Did you find the information you needed before making your booking?
- Were the staff you dealt with friendly and professional?
- Were response times fast enough?
- Was it easy to make a booking (either with staff or online)?
- Was the booking process fast enough?
- Did you understand the pricing structure?
- Were the conditions of booking easy to understand?
Telephone Etiquette
- Did the employee answer the phone within 2-3 rings?
- Did the employee thank you for calling?
- Did the employee answer in a friendly voice?
- Did the employee supply his/her name and name of the location?
- If you were placed on hold, were you asked to hold?
- When the person you were transferred to answered your call, were you thanked for holding?
- Did the employee confirm your request?
- Were you provided with information relevant to the product or service you asked about?
Website / Business Presentation
- Was the website easy to use and informative?
- Did the website appeal to you visually?
- Were the business premises clean and tidy?
- Did you see enough signage telling you where to go and what to do in the premises?
Customer Service
- Were you greeted on arrival in a friendly way?
- Were you offered help? (with bags, orientation to toilets, introduction to experience /event)
- Were you made to feel welcome?
- Were the staff easy to recognise?
- Were the staff tidy and well-presented?
- Were the bathrooms clean?
- Did the staff tell you about other services / products available?
- Did the experience live up to your expectation?
Use the Data – Take Actions
By being open to the results of your mystery shopping survey, you can look at updating or improving many aspects of your business operations and customer experience. Be positive about the results and take action whether it be fixing a squeaking door, repainting or installing some signs, instigating a bathroom cleaning roster or reviewing your staff training.
10 Tips to Improve Business
Written by Steph Kendall
- Set up a customer rewards programme - it can be as simple as a discount or voucher to spend on their birthday.
- Think outside the box to offer added-value services. For example, an accommodation provider can host a cooking school in the kitchens with the chef as tutor.
- Offer an incentive to customers to refer your business to friends and family.
- Encourage your visitors to post (positive) reviews about your business on their social media pages such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter.
- Invite travel writers and publishers to stay at your accommodation or experience your activity in 'exchange' for a review getting published. (Look at online and print publications).
- Generate some buzz about your business with press releases and newsflashes - new staff, upcoming events or promotions - and send them to the local press and online media websites.
- Advertise a short-term promotion via search engine advertising (Google Adwords, Bing or Yahoo!) - you'll gain exposure at the top of search engines' results pages and promote to a 'qualified' audience.
- Spruce up your staff for the New Year with a new hat, badge or complete uniform. Making the staff look good makes for 'feel good' vibes all round.
- Delegate tasks to trusted staff so you can spend more time 'on' the business rather than 'in' the business.
- Review your existing listings in relevant directories and on tourism websites - make sure your listings stand out at the top of the page.
Top Tourism Site of the Month
This month's Top Tourism Site Award goes to Rotorua Canopy Tours, Rotorua.
The design of this website is really appealing with a great use of highlighting colours, graphics and white space. The use of the forest as a background to each page is really appropriate to the business and enhances rather than detracts from its overall visual impact. One of its best features is the video on the home page which makes this experience look very appealing. Some of the optimisation elements on the website could be used to better effect, however, so it will be interesting to see how this relatively new website fares on the search engine rankings over time.
Canopy Tours Rotorua offer visitors of all ages and fitness levels a three hour guided eco-tour through 1.2 kilometres of forest. Visitors explore via ziplines (flying foxes), suspended treebridges and the tree platforms as guides share their passion and knowledge for the local history, forest and conservation challenges.
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