Newsletter : March 2016
Written by Steph Kendall
Welcome to the New Zealand Tourism Guide www.tourism.net.nz March 2016 issue. If you have news or comments, please email us news@tourism.net.nz.
In this March newsletter:
Glaciers' Melt Rate Speeding Up
Making US headlines online is news of Fox and Franz Josef glaciers' rapid melting rate. The two glaciers are among the country's top tourist attractions and are popular with hikers and heli-hikers.
However, due to the rapid rate at which the glaciers are melting, visitors can no longer hike onto them from the valley floor – the end of a tradition that lasted over 100 years. Tour operators ceased guided hikes onto the Franz Josef in 2012 and Fox in 2014. A 2014 paper published in the journal Global and Planetary Change concluded the two glaciers have each melted by 3km in length since the 1800s, making them about 20 percent shorter. The glaciers have recently been melting at a faster pace than ever previously recorded, the authors said.
The only way for tourists to hike the glaciers now is by being flown onto them by helicopter. Numbers are limited by logistics, but up to 80,000 tourists can be flown onto the glaciers by helicopter, with a further 150,000 landing briefly during a scenic flight.
February was the second hottest ever recorded in New Zealand and it seems the hotter weather has created a new tourist attraction away from the glaciers. Tourists are taking boat rides to see some of the massive icebergs that have begun to shear away in the lakes on the other side of the mountains.
Air BNB Continues its Advance
The NZ Herald reports an increasing number of people in Rotorua cashing in on the trend of renting out spare rooms on Airbnb. However, the local motel association says there are concerns around the lack of regulation around the increasingly popular website.
People throughout New Zealand not only Rotorua are listing their rooms on Airbnb with rooms in major tourist destinations available from $15 up to $1500 per night. Some listings are from accredited tourism providers, but many from private individuals. It is an interesting trend and definitely one for all New Zealand accommodation providers to be aware of because the uptake is massive – over 2,000,000+ listings,34,000 cities, 190 countries and 60,000,000+ guests.
Wondering what you can do to match Airbnb's appeal to mobile, tech-savvy, time-poor travellers? Well, if you're a hotel business, you can't necessarily compete on price, but there of course other elements of service that all accommodation providers can and will compete on:
- Quick, easy and efficient online booking service
- Customer service – communication and warm, genuine hospitality
- Clean and inviting rooms, welcome gifts and useful regional information.
Check out Airbnb – its search mechanism, booking system, advice to hosts and guests is all useful and interesting reading for those in the accommodation and hospitality industries.
The World's Longest Flights to NZ from December
Qatar Airways has confirmed it will begin a non-stop, more than 18 hour service between Doha and Auckland, which is set to become the world's longest flight.
The airline will operate the daily flights with a Boeing 777, the same aircraft Emirates uses for its new direct service to New Zealand, which launched recently and is currently the longest commercial flight available. New Zealand travellers will be able to use the service to reach European destinations such as London via Doha, Qatar's capital.
At 14,534 km, the Doha to Auckland route is slightly longer than the roughly 14,200 km Dubai-Auckland journey. The Qatar Airways service is expected to take up to 18 hours and 30 minutes, compared with up to 17 hours and 15 minutes for the non-stop Emirates flight.
Time to Review the Business Plan
This month it's all about business planning bringing to mind Benjamin Franklin's much-quoted maxim, "If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail". A very useful place to start is the New Zealand government website, http://www.business.govt.nz/, which provides a wide array of tips, tools and templates for business owners.
It includes a template for the all essential business plan. A business plan helps you set goals for your business, and plan how you're going to reach them. It also forces you to think about your finances, your marketing and your team. (It may also help secure investment).
Whether you need to write one from scratch or revise an existing plan, the template is very useful for helping you structure a business plan and for ideas about what to write in each section. Sections in this business plan template include:
- Business strategy
- Marketing
- Team and management structure
- SWOT and success factors
- Market research and analysis
- Financial budgets and forecasts
You can customise the template to suit your business, and what you're using it for – this could mean adding in extra sections, or cutting out ones you don't need.
We also suggest you review tips and advice on how to create and implement a business plan, also available on this website.
Tools for Business: The Business Model Canvas
The Business Model Canvas is a freely available online tool which enables you to create a canvas showing your business model on one page. Described as a strategic management and entrepreneurial tool, the canvas allows you to describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot your business model. Possibly handy in those meetings with the bank manager, accountant, investors, partners and staff too.
Also available on the same website by Strategyzer, is the Value Proposition Canvas, which makes explicit how you are creating value for your customers. It helps you to design products and services your customers want.
Check them (and other tools) out at https://strategyzer.com/.
Top Tourism Site of the Month
This month's Top Tourism Site Award goes to Platinum Villas, Queenstown.
This website gets the nomination this month for everything that its design sets out to incorporate and achieve. The clever use of space manages to include just about everything an accommodation would feature on its home page, mostly above the fold and all without a sense of 'clutter'. So what does it include?
- A clear navigation
- Chinese language version
- Home page booking mechanism
- Testimonials
- Local information (upcoming events)
- Enticing copy
- Virtual tours
- Special offer
- Quality images
- Newsletter sign up
- Links to social media
There is really not much missing aside from a well-written Meta description in the home page source code – as this is essential search engine fodder, it may be worth revisiting especially as the online Queenstown accommodation market is fiercely competitive.
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: Ground Floor, 518 Colombo Street, Christchurch