Newsletter : October 2017
Written by Steph Kendall
Welcome to the New Zealand Tourism Guide October 2017 issue. If you have news or comments, please email us news@tourism.net.nz.
In this October newsletter:
Stats on Silver Cruisers Help Tourism Marketing Plans
The first official statistics on the cruise industry have been released. True to the stereotype, over three quarters of cruise tourists to New Zealand were aged between 50 and 80, with 121 female passengers for every 100 men among the 222,000 passengers who visited New Zealand ports last year. Half of the passengers were Australians, with just 7 per cent New Zealanders.
The first official cruise figures from Statistics New Zealand show total passenger numbers dropped 7 per cent for the year to the end of June, partly because of fewer winter cruises, but they were still 14 per cent higher than in 2015. The Bay of Islands suffered the biggest fall in passengers, recording 23,241 fewer than the previous season, while Akaroa had an extra 18,502 passengers.
Four out of every five cruise ship passengers visited Auckland, 75 per cent went to Fiordland, Dunedin and Wellington, and roughly two thirds visited Tauranga and Canterbury.
Spend figures for cruise passengers will be available in December and may vary substantially between ports depending on factors such as the weather. However, with the arrival of larger vessels anticipated, passenger numbers were expected to surpass 344,000 over the coming two seasons, contributing an estimated $640 million to the economy.
Model Behaviour Promotes South Island to Over 300,000
Japanese model Kazumi Yamamoto visited New Zealand for a shoot with lifestyle and fashion magazine Liniere. Shot in Central Otago and Canterbury, the spread will showcase Queenstown and Lake Tekapo.
"Japan is New Zealand's second largest Asian market, and due to a deep commitment to the market by Tourism New Zealand and Air New Zealand, visitor numbers topped 100,000 in December 2016," says Tourism New Zealand, "With the upcoming 2019 Rugby World Cup and 2020 Summer Olympics to be hosted in Japan, the economy is buoyant which we know means people travel more. These events are also an important opportunity to increase our visibility in the market. We are feeling very positive about the future growth of the Japan market. The Japanese market is important because more than half tend to visit in the shoulder season and this supports our work to spread visitation across the year."
The spread in Liniere has an estimated equivalent advertising value of NZ$100,000 and Yamamoto's social media accounts have a following of over 33,000.
World's Hairiest to Head to Auckland
Auckland won the rights to host the World Beard and Moustache Championships of 2021. The event is a biennial competition in which some of the most outrageous and highly styled facial hair on the planet is on display. The event will bring around 500 people to Auckland in the shoulder season, with many participants expected to take the opportunity to travel across New Zealand while they're here.
The two-day competition will include the 16 traditional categories of judgement in The World Beard and Moustache Championships, plus a 'Whiskerina' category for women to enter and 'Crowd Favourite' where attendees choose the winner.
Australian Travel Agents in the Saddle
Australian travel specialists will get first-hand experience of some of New Zealand's favourite cycle trails in November to help them promote cycling holidays in New Zealand. A cycling famil will see 10 Flight Centre personnel spend five days riding parts of the Alps2Ocean Cycle Trail and Otago Central Rail Trail.
Tourism New Zealand's focus on leisure cycling has resulted in participation increasing from 36,000-39,000 Australians in the past year. Tourism New Zealand says the latest promotion targets those people who are interested in cycling or active holidays who may not already be part of the typical pool of people already considering a holiday in New Zealand. The current campaign will run until the end of November across social and digital channels. Tourism New Zealand has also sent out a cycling special e-newsletter to more than 1000 agents in Australia and will be running a cycling webinar for industry.
Getting into Gmail's Primary Inboxes
From its beta-release back in April 2004, Google's web based email service Gmail is now used by an estimated 1 billion people. And an average email user receives over 100 email messages a day.
Gmail developed tabbed inboxes in 2013 to help users manage their mail. In addition to the Primary inbox, users could (and still can) choose to use inbox tabs Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums. (These tabbed inboxes are optional for users.)
Gmail delivers email messages to tabbed inboxes based on complex and changing algorithms that consider elements such as subscriber engagement, content and sender information. Marketing and bulk emails have a higher chance of being delivered to the Promotions inbox.
Unfortunately, the only way to ensure that your subscriber sees your email in their Primary inbox if they use tabbed inboxes, is if the subscriber has chosen to move your email from the Promotions tab to the Primary tab. There is more chance of this happening if a subscriber sees value in your emails. From a marketing perspective then, it remains just as vital as ever to develop and build a relationship with subscribers by:
- Creating as much value as you can in your emails for subscribes
- Working on new ways to develop engagement from your subscribers
- Trialling different emails before you send them. Which ones end up in Primary and which end up in Promotions inboxes? (Try changing the balance between using simple text message/heavy HTML, images, links and a mention of the price.)
Top Tourism Site of the Month
This month's Top Tourism Site Award goes to Eden House.
Eden House offers guests a farm stay experience in either a B&B, backpackers or remote musterer's hut. The images and colour palette of the website seem to reflect the style of accommodation, rural and unfussy. As the hosts say, "an experience we believe isn't offered in many places in the world."
Don't forget to marvel at the parallax scrolling - used to great effect on this website!
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
- June 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