Newsletter : January 2013
Written by Steph Kendall
Welcome to the New Zealand Tourism Guide www.tourism.net.nz January 2013 issue. If you have news or comments, please email us news@tourism.net.nz.
In this January newsletter:
A Good Start to the Summer
Figures released by Statistics New Zealand recently confirmed that international visitor arrivals to New Zealand were up by 0.8 per cent for the month of November. Tourism New Zealand say, “As we head into the summer high-season, it is encouraging to see that visitor arrivals have been maintained.”
Where are New Zealand visitors coming from?
- Australia - Australian visitor arrivals were up 2.5 per cent for the month while arrivals were up 1.0 per cent for the year.
- China - Chinese arrivals grew 17.6 per cent for the month, seeing China overtake the United Kingdom to become New Zealand's second biggest source of visitors in the November 2012 year.
- Japan - The increase in arrivals from Japan, up 3.3 per cent in November, indicates on-going recovery in the market.
- Indonesia - Numbers continue to grow.
- Korea - Numbers continue to grow.
View more on tourism visitor statistics.
Tattoo Tourism
According to travellers' bible, Lonely Planet, the North Island of New Zealand is the second best place in the world to get a tattoo. Steve Waugh at Ballistic Tattoo in Queen St believes “tattoo tourism” could be promoted by New Zealand.
NZ Herald reported him as saying, “To be honest, I am quite surprised at New Zealand's high tattooing ranking, but hey, if that's how the world thinks then there's definitely an opportunity. Tattoos are more mainstream here than in many other countries, especially in our Māori culture, so there shouldn't be a problem promoting it to tourists.”
Waugh said business often surged when a cruise ship was in port and an increasing number of tourists saw a tattoo as taking home a souvenir with a difference. The silver fern design was the most popular choice for his foreign customers, followed by the tiki and other Māori artworks.
Tatts in Your Business
Could you offer your visitors the opportunity to take home a permanent souvenir to remind them of their New Zealand adventure? You may need to borrow the services of a local tattoo artist but if you're based in Auckland or Rotorua (considered major centres for tattoo art), this could be a novel 'extra' and a unique way to promote your business. Here are a few ideas that could be promoted in your physical business, as well as online.
- Take home a souvenir tattoo
- Win a tattoo
- Enter a competition to design our company tatt
- Wear our tattoo and qualify for a free XXX
- Share your NZ tattoo with Facebook friends.
2012 Highs & Lows: 13 Ways to Use Your Web Stats
If you are going to make just one resolution for your business at the start of the New Year, it should be to examine your website statistics. They can point you in the right direction for making changes to your website which could result in more online visitors, more enquiries and more sales.
You'll find 13 suggestions below for the year 'twenty-thirteen' on what action to take on the back of what your website stats are telling you about your website performance:
- Find out how many people visited your website during 2012
- Determine your website's current usefulness within your business (as well as its potential) and decide how much time and money to commit to its upkeep (fresh content, new offers, incentives, design, promotions, etc)
- Work out how many bookings came via your website
- Decide what level of investment you want to make in your website development this year
- Find out how people arrived at your website (via search engines, newsletters, Facebook, directories, advertising, etc)
- Prioritise your online marketing spend and review your strategy
- Examine the key search phrases used by your website visitors
- By understanding what your visitors are looking for, adjust website content accordingly
- Review the pathways or pages visited by most people
- Edit the content of each page to ensure your key message (book, enquire, contact us, etc) is coming across clearly
- Check how many people left your website on the booking page without completing the booking
- Review your booking engine and/or prices to investigate what is putting people off
- Use popularly used keyword phrases to find leading competitors online
- Learn from your competitors to improve optimisation, operations and offers
- Look at how many pages your visitors view before they make a booking
- Edit the content of each 'exit' page accordingly to make pages more 'sticky'
- Check your bounce rate
- Edit the home page to include relevant search phrases, clear business proposition and incentives to 'stay on site': clear pathways, easy navigation and good 'hooks'/ enticements (text, graphics, video, etc)
- Review busy times (e.g. high visitor numbers) for each day, week, month and year
- Schedule in advertising accordingly (e.g. set up Google Adwords to display at very specific times)
- Review the origin of your visitors (the countries they come from)
- Plan online and offline advertising into specific markets
- Check which Robots and Spiders are visiting your website
- Major bots such as Googlebot and BaiDuSpider should be making regular visits. Ensure they can index all appropriate pages of your website
- Look at how long your visitors spend on average on your website
- Time how long it takes you to read/scan the home page and one or two sub pages (pages typically seen before a viewer takes a required action). Does this time tally with the time most people spend on your website? If not, look at reviewing the website content starting with the home page.
10 Tips to Improve Business
Written by Steph Kendall
- Look at new creative ways to promote your business - tattoo tourism is a great example!
- Grow your email distribution list through a free-to-enter online competition (remember to request permission to email entrants in the future).
- Create a "new look for the New Year" newsletter with eye-catching branding, easy to read contents and design and use it regularly to send news and special offers to your customers.
- Review your website optimisation - is it time to edit key pages to include new search phrases?
- Make sure you display up-to-date prices and information on your publications (both print and digital) - especially important at the start of a New Year.
- Learn to welcome your guests with a few words in their language - make sure you use the polite and correct form of address.
- Encourage your customers with incentives to provide feedback on their experience to help you improve your business practises.
- Create the best first impression and give your reception area a deep clean - get rid of old, tatty magazines and leaflets, get a new doormat, touch up the paintwork, freshen up the flowers, the seating, the furniture and the stationery; and make sure everything is sparkling.
- Consider adding signage around your business in languages other than English to help your guests find their way around.
- Look at new elements to revitalise your website such as flash animation, sound, video and picture galleries.
Top Tourism Site of the Month
This month's Top Tourism Site Award goes to Pathfinder Tours.
This website is particularly eye-catching using bold and appealing photography in a clearly laid-out, well-spaced design. The headings are well-sized and the call to action buttons (Enquire Now and More) are clearly visible. This website avoids the 'cutting-edge' look favoured by other tour operators targeting a younger audience (there's no pumping soundtrack, home page video or huge promotion of social media) and aims for a broad base audience in its tone of voice and look. The website could benefit from page copy editing and it hasn't yet used opportunities for optimisation (e.g. lack of content styling and keyword usage).
Pathfinder tours offer a wide variety of custom-made, small group tours in the North Island of New Zealand including package tours (from sedate to extreme), ski holidays, golf tours, fishing trips, surf school, farm stays, hiking and climbing adventures and day trips to wineries, breweries and herb farms.
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