Newsletter : October 2015
Written by Steph Kendall
Welcome to the New Zealand Tourism Guide www.tourism.net.nz October 2015 issue. If you have news or comments, please email us news@tourism.net.nz.
In this October newsletter:
Keoghan Proves Promotional Punch in the USA
Americans have been motivated to explore New Zealand by bike, thanks to a recent US marketing campaign – shot on the Alps 2 Ocean Cycle Trail and the Queenstown Trail – and fronted by TV personality and avid cyclist, Phil Keoghan.
Initial results from the campaign, which ran from 2 March to 31 May, have been very positive. More than 2.5 million online engagements were generated across CyclingNews.com, Google, YouTube, Facebook, AOP and video buying platform BrightRoll. This drove around 60,000 people to the campaign landing page at newzealand.com.
It had a strong impact on experienced cyclists aware of the campaign and actively considering a trip to New Zealand – with almost all of them (92 per cent) motivated to take a cycling holiday here after seeing the online and print adverts.
While many Americans cycle whilst on holiday in New Zealand (14,000 in 2014 alone), those visitors whose trip revolves around a special interest – such as cycling – tend to prefer visiting in the shoulder months and generally stay longer and spend more.
The campaign was complemented by impressive US media results recently secured through Tourism New Zealand's International Media Programme. The highlight including a three-page June feature in Men's Journal about Zealand cycle trails - to buy the equivalent in advertising would have cost USD $432,608.
New Zealand is the World's Favourite Film Destination
According to a recent study by HBO television network, New Zealand is the top film destination people most want to visit in the world - thanks to its lead role in 'The Lord of the Rings' Trilogy.
The study looked at holiday destinations made famous by TV and film and found these places are booming in popularity with New Zealand topping the list of places viewers most want to travel to.
New York rated second for the Sex and the City fan trail, and Game of Thrones locations featured three times in the Top 10.
Tourism New Zealand's Kevin Bowler says: "There's no doubt these movies have given us a very successful platform on which to promote New Zealand as a great place to visit and experience a real movie set and we have been reaping the benefits of this for some time now.
"We have continuing interest from film makers wanting to use New Zealand as their backdrop and we are confident our role in film tourism is going to keep us top of mind for those people wanting to live the dream and visit their favourite film locations."
In the year ending March 2015, more than 80,000 visitors said The Hobbit Trilogy was a factor in choosing New Zealand as their holiday destination. Hobbiton, which acted as the Shire for the movies and is now a permanent movie set, is New Zealand's fastest growing tourist attraction.
Record 3 Million Visitors to New Zealand in 1 Year
At the end of August, John Key announced that a record 3 million people had visited New Zealand over the past year. Not only did a record number of people visit New Zealand, they stayed for longer and spent more than ever before. He went on to say that these figures helped boost the NZ economy – in the main cities AND in the regions – creating more jobs and income for New Zealanders. (Those 3 million visitors spent $8.7 billion, which is up 28 per cent on the previous 12 months.)
Data released by Statistics New Zealand showed that for the year-ending July 2015, over three million visitors came to the country, an increase of 7.3 per cent on the previous 12 months.
Leading the way was the Australians at 1.29 million maintaining steady growth of 4.1 per cent. New Zealand's second largest source of visitor arrivals are the Chinese at 315,248, growing at 29.5 per cent year on year. The UK, USA, Germany and Japan round out New Zealand's top six source markets.
NZ Tourism Guide 'Mobile Friendly' Listings for Advertisers
New Zealand Tourism Guide (www.tourism.net.nz) has a new feature for those businesses already listed with us. We now have the words Mobile Friendly (the same as Google does) for listings, if your own website is mobile responsive or mobile friendly i.e. it resizes correctly for a mobile device.
This is great for travellers who view our site on their mobile as they will be able to see if your site is also mobile friendly. If you'd like us to add 'Mobile Friendly' to your listing, please let us know (or let us know if you aren't sure whether this applies to your website).
Email webupdates@tourism.net.nz with your businesses name and the mobile friendly website in the email. (We will double check your site before initiating). AND if you don't have a mobile friendly site drop us an email sales@tourism.net.nz as we can provide a cost effective solution.
Tools for Business: SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is an online survey development cloud-based company founded in 1999 by Ryan Finley. It has produced the world's most popular online survey software.
SurveyMonkey provides:
- free, customizable surveys and polls (on any topic – e.g. customer satisfaction, employee engagement)
- data analysis
- sample selection
- bias elimination
- data representation tools
In addition to providing free and paid plans for individual users, SurveyMonkey offers large-scale enterprise options for companies interested in data analysis, brand management, and consumer-focused marketing. For smaller users it offers a library a sample survey questions and templates. Responses to surveys and polls can be collected in real time and an 'Analyze' tool helps turn survey date into insights and professional reporting.
SurveyMonkey provides data collection, data analysis, brand management, and consumer marketing for Facebook, Virgin America, Salesforce.com, Samsung, and Kraft Foods, among others. As of 2015, SurveyMonkey has 25 million users completing 90 million surveys a month.
Find out more about SurveyMonkey.
Top Tourism Site of the Month
This month's Top Tourism Site Award goes to Black Cat Cruises.
Black Cat Cruises based in Christchurch and Akaroa offer ferry and visitor experiences such as dolphin encounters and nature cruises. Their website is very attractive with an easy to navigate layout and very readable headings and fonts. It has a responsive, mobile friendly interface and includes useful functionality such as: translation into 3 languages, links to its social media accounts (Facebook and YouTube), prominently positioned 'Booking' buttons, easy to find (and up-to-date) blog featuring interesting posts, company insights, customer stories and news. The 'social hub' is also a very interesting feature of the website as it encourages a high degree of interaction between business and client encouraging the sharing of stories, photograph and memories – all excellent engagement opportunities for new business!
Overall a website worth exploring for its great content and features. Lots of 'takeaways' from this month's winner for other website owners.
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