Newsletter : May 2014
Written by Steph Kendall
Welcome to the New Zealand Tourism Guide www.tourism.net.nz May 2014 issue. If you have news or comments, please email us news@tourism.net.nz.
In this May newsletter:
Four Million Chinese Hear NZ Is 'Dream Destination'
Around four million Chinese were told this month that "New Zealand is a place that makes people relaxed and happy" by one of China's most prominent opinion leaders, Gao Xiaosong, host of popular Chinese online talk show Morning Call. The show airs on Youku Tudou (China's version of YouTube) and recently featured two New Zealand episodes titled "Explore Middle Earth". Gao Xiaosong has a huge social media presence with more than 35 million followers on Chinese micro-blog site Weibo.
The hour-long episodes were filmed in Auckland, Wellington and Queenstown. The first episode has been seen by 3.8 million people while the second episode screened in China on Friday 9 May and by Monday morning had received 1.7 million views.
Gao Xiaosong spoke of being extremely impressed with what New Zealand has to offer the Chinese visitor saying: "New Zealand tourism pays a lot of attention to Chinese tourists and many places offer a Chinese translation."
Gao Xiaosong described New Zealand as being the destination he dreamed of, praising the breathtaking landscape, environment and friendly hospitality. Waiheke Island received special mention as a particularly spiritual place for creative minds and he claimed Glenorchy's Paradise was the most beautiful place he has ever been.
Royal Visit Sets a Trend for UK Tourists
New Zealand has been named the UK's number one dream holiday destination in the British edition of Trip Advisor's bi-annual TripBarometer study, just weeks after the Royal visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. This sees New Zealand ranked fifth most desirable destination behind Australia, Italy, the US and France. However, New Zealand is number one for travellers from the UK and India, two of Tourism New Zealand's key target markets.
The poll results come following reports from UK hotel search website trivago.co.uk that searches for New Zealand hotels are up 70 per cent and reports that travel comparison website TravelSupermarket saw a 153 per cent rise in searches for New Zealand after one day of the royal visit.
Tourism New Zealand commented, "We know that there are a range of factors that influence a person's decision to travel to New Zealand. However, all the positive stories that have appeared, particularly around iconic tourism experiences like the Shotover Jet and sailing on the Waitemata Harbour, will help reinforce people's perception of New Zealand as an attractive and welcoming visitor destination."
Check out the 'Fit for A Royal' travel itinerary published on TNZ website, which has been viewed over 7,500 times.
Top US Travel Editors Experience 100% Pure New Zealand
The crème de la crème of international travel editors from North America, including the likes of the editor of National Geographic Traveller arrived in Auckland for 2014 Travel Classics Writers' Conference at the beginning of May in a rare media coup for the NZ tourism industry. These editors represented some of the world's top premium publications including Travel + Leisure, Departures, Robb Report and Food and Wine. (Publications which reach millions of potential travellers.)
The delegation were able to explore Auckland and the wider Auckland region (including Waiheke Island), plus Māori Culture in Rotorua, a winery tour in the Hawke's Bay and a luxury alpine experience in Queenstown. 97% of the conference attendees chose to extend their visit beyond the conference dates.
To Tweet or Not to Tweet? That is the Question
Edited by Steph Kendall
If your business has yet to utter a tweet on Twitter, maybe it's time to look into it….? Here, we offer an overview of what Twitter is, the potential for helping business and how to set Twitter up. However, before you commit time and resources to tweeting, do first consider why you want to use Twitter in your business, what you are going to use it for and think about whether it's going to be effective for your specific business and market. (Twitter like other social media can become a timely and slightly addictive past time.)
What Twitter Is
So in short, Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called tweets, which can also include videos and photos. On Twitter, information is shared immediately. People use it on desktops, tablets and mobile devices, to share events, news and have real-time conversations. Business use Twitter to talk about their industry and their service and to connect directly with present and future customers.
What Twitter Can Do for Businesses
- Helps connect businesses with their customers in real time
- Enable businesses to join and perhaps influence conversations in a way that can help build business
- See what competitors are tweeting about or search for industry keywords to listen and gather market intelligence
- Grow business, run exciting promotions, strengthen a brand and engage with customers through Twitter's advertising options
Setting Your Business Up On Twitter
- Why Twitter? Decide why you want to use Twitter in your business. For instance, is it to market your company, connect with customers, provide support or track competitors?
- Pick your name. Keep it short; when people reply to your messages, your name will take up some of Twitter's 140 character message limit.
- Fill in your Twitter profile completely. You can use your Twitter profile to tell people what your business does and what you use Twitter for.
- Have a good icon or image and include a link to your website. Photos work best for a personal feed. Professional shots are best of all.
- Connect with people. Start by following people you find interesting, people you know, clients, organisations or complementary businesses you rate, authors, commentators in your field or journalists you admire.
- Start tweeting. Remember tweets are public, so your messages can be seen by anyone. (Think about learning some Twitter lingo – useful for keeping tweets short and sweet).
- Write for your particular clients and customers. What do they want to know? What do they ask you? Educate, inform and entertain them.
- Don't sell. This is not the place for a stream of high-pressure sales messages. Think of it as an online networking event. Promote your services occasionally but this should not be the main focus of your tweeting.
- Share valuable content. Post information you think your followers would find useful or interesting – links to articles or video, share quotes, relevant news, books you've read, opinions, tips, etc.
- Reply to other tweets. If you want to publicly reply to something someone else has tweeted, you can get their attention by clicking the Reply option next to their tweet.
- Use a link shortener. This will reduce the length of any website addresses you tweet.
- Use retweets to build a following. If you see a tweet from someone else you like, retweet it. People will thank you, and you're likely to pick up more followers as a result.
- Learn about hashtags. Hashtags are another way to build your profile. They help people find tweets which relate to a particular subject.
- Show up regularly. It doesn't have to be every day, but consistency is everything. Check what people are saying about you often and reply promptly.
Finally, our most important tip - find out more, view https://business.twitter.com/
10 Tips to Improve Business
Compiled by Steph Kendall
This month our tips focus on how to get the best out of your print advertising budget.
- KISS (Keep it simple stupid) - Do not overcomplicate your advert - if it looks cluttered, people won't attempt to understand what it's about, they will simply turn the page over.
- Use professional help – Get a graphic designer (preferably someone recommended to you) to work on your advert with you, the results will be worth the expense, especially if you commission a range of adverts at the same time which create a strong, cohesive campaign look.
- Have a captivating headline - Don't just use your business name at the top of your advert. The headline must be compelling enough to instantly grab someone's attention. Try and make your headline fun and play to the readers' desires.
- Use only one 'hero' image and choose it wisely - A good picture should instantly bring to mind the experience and inspire someone to 'jump right in'.
- Include a call to action - What do you hope to achieve by the advert? If it is bookings, then give a call to action along the lines of "YOUR ADVENTURE STARTS HERE, CALL..."
- Clearly display contact details – Make sure people can clearly see details such as a website address, phone number or location (include a small map if there's room on your ad).
- Use colour if possible - Without colour your ad will be less noticeable and people may perceive it as being bland before even reading it.
- Proofread your ad carefully – It's your job to make sure that everything in your advert is correct, so read it carefully, read it out loud, read it again. Whatever you do, don't let it go to press with incorrect details or typos.
- Pick the best print ad options - When dealing with request for print advertising, ask what the print run is, where the publications will be distributed and who they are aimed at.
- Use an advertorial – Try to arrange an advertorial in publications in which you advertise. An advertorial is a feature article about your business (often on the basis of information you provide) and can be effective as it appears to be more objective and have more credibility than advertising.
More Business Tips
You'll find more business tips in our newsletter archive, alongside:
Top Tourism Site of the Month
This month's Top Tourism Site Award goes to Natural High.
This website combines style, practicality and attractive design incredibly successfully. It presents a vast array of information about its adventure tours, indexed clearly through well-designed graphical and text button and page content. It also uses optimisation technique very effectively (e.g. keywords are used in the hypertext links to sub-pages) although it could make more of alt tags for its images.
The website is chock full of great features including:
- Clear headings, easy to read font
- Excellent use of on-page optimisation i.e. keywords in all the right places
- Reviews, blog, special offers, newsletter, social media
- Wonderful icons making the website very navigable even for non-speakers of English
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, 518 Colombo Street, Christchurch