Newsletter : April 2004
brought to you by New Zealand Tourism Online www.tourism.net.nz
In this April Newsletter:
NZTO Comment
by Garry Bond, General Manager, New Zealand Tourism Online
What are your competitive advantages? How does your company gain and maintain an indepth knowledge of key international or domestic markets? What type of data do you collect and how is it used? How do you motivate and recognise staff efforts? How do you provide leadership to create a work environment that delivers excellence? Are you meeting your tourism clients expectations and how do you measure it?
These are just a few of the probing questions New Zealand Tourism Online subjected itself to while submitting its entry for the New Zealand Tourism Awards 2004. If you have entered this award before you'll know that it takes a considerable amount of time and effort - but it's worth it. By entering this award it forces you to look at every area of your business and highlights your strengths as well as your weaknesses.
I am aware that many operators find it a daunting task or they feel they may not be able to present a competitive entry but, my recommendation is that you should look at the criteria. This will enable you to find out what areas you may need to improve upon and at the very least it may help your operation become a better, stronger and more profitable business. If you look at it now, then you may be ready to enter next year.
Visit the Tourism Awards Web site for more information and the criteria required.
New Web Site Feature
Continued development on the www.tourism.net.nz Web site has resulted in a new featured spot being available at a top of each Web page. There is only one spot on each page i.e. Christchurch Apartments or Rotorua Motels and Motor Lodges etc. This position is ideal for additional exposure and it's cost effective advertising for your business.
For more information on this additional promotional opportunity from New Zealand Tourism Online please email sales@tourism.net.nz or call toll free on 0800 14 65 48. Don't delay otherwise someone else may get your spot.
Can you help Gina?
Gina Sanders International Soprano and Theatre Restaurant Dining. This is a chance to experience opera up close.
Leading Soprano Gina Sanders is seeking high quality venues to deliver opera with fine wine and food to discerning audiences, New Zealand wide. Please email or call (09) 292 8047 for further information.
Gmail (Google Email)
Possibly sensing that they may be about to lose a little of their search engine market share, it seems Google are diversifying. Gmail is a new, free email service currently in the beta phase of testing. Gmail is big, providing one thousand megabytes (1 Gigabyte) of storage. Compare that to Hotmail's five megabytes and you can see the plan is never to have to delete an email again. Besides its size, Gmail's big draw card is the fact that it implements Google search technology to retrieve messages, thereby eliminating the need to create file structures to sort your email. It also allows users to view a message in the context of a conversation, by displaying all replies to a selected email.
Although Gmail won't contain any popup or banner ads there is a catch, Gmail will contain relevant text ads. That is, relevant to the content of your email. Although no humans will read your messages, Gmail employs automated robots to match adverts to the content of your email. No problem, as long as you've no secrets from a robot. Find out more about Gmail.
Create a Web Page Archive with "Furl"
Do you find organising Web page 'Favourites' a nightmare? Are you building file structures you know you're never going to use, and then jamming everything into the same folder anyway? Now there's a free solution... Furl.
Furl is a neat new tool that allows you to save Web pages, annotate them, post comments and share them with others once you've stored them in an online searchable cache.
Furl solves the problem of Web pages stored in your 'Favourites' folder somehow moving off into Cyberspace, never to return. Furl combines the solution with the added functionality of a Web log, allowing you to annotate your stored Web pages with comments and share them with as large a community as you wish.
Although some of these features have been available before, you couldn't get them as one cohesive package, and they were only available on your machine. Furl, on the other hand, is a Web-based application accessible from any Internet-connected computer.
If you need to store, revisit or save Web pages, forget saving pages to your desktop, messy storage filing systems or out of date 'Favourites'.
We welcome any feedback or contributions for our next newsletter - just email our team web@tourism.net.nz
Regards,
The Team
Ph. 0800 14 65 47
https://www.tourism.net.nz
New Zealand Tourism Online Limited
Head Office: 208 Cashel Street, Christchurch
