Newsletter : November 2015
Written by Steph Kendall
Welcome to the New Zealand Tourism Guide www.tourism.net.nz November 2015 issue. If you have news or comments, please email us news@tourism.net.nz.
In this November newsletter:
Luring Backpackers Across The Ditch to Play More Every Day
International backpackers (18 – 24 year olds) travelling through Australia are the target of Tourism New Zealand's latest backpacker campaign. TNZ will target this market through Facebook delivering campaign messages specific to backpackers, and will track how many of these backpackers end up coming to New Zealand.
In the year ending December 2014, Australia attracted around 590,000 international backpacker arrivals of which 4 per cent of these visitors then went on to travel to New Zealand. There is a significant group of backpackers that visit Australia without going on to visit New Zealand.
The backpacker visitor stays on average 31.3 days – significantly more than an average holiday visitor. They participate in more paid activities, travel more widely and arrive outside the peak season, making them a great value target market.
New Zealand Goes On 'US Tour'
Tourism New Zealand and 25 New Zealand operators recently undertook the biggest sales mission in the US in over a decade. The sales trip was part of TNZ's work to support Air New Zealand's new Houston to Auckland route (launching 15 December).
The trip included a trade event for New Zealand operators and leading travel industry representatives and agents in the US to develop relationships. From LA, the New Zealand team visited Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and Houston.
During the tour, over 400 agents were engaged with. Over the next few months, TNZ will reinforce awareness of New Zealand in the US with a series of initiatives including: focused trade training webinars; joint ventures with key travel partners; a series of local advertising campaigns; and PR and IMP activity pre and post launch of the new route.
Hopes that New NZ Ambassador Increases Visitor Numbers
The number of people visiting New Zealand from India is growing steadily with numbers up 24.9 per cent to 43,329 for the year ending August. Indian visitors tend to travel between October to March and family arrivals peak from April to June. This makes the India market very attractive to the New Zealand tourism industry as it means visitors arriving in the shoulder seasons.
Zealand during October visiting Northland, Wellington and Queenstown. In India he has a social media following of more than 4.3million, has a new movie out and is working on two more. During his stay, Sidharth filmed a video highlighting New Zealand's spectacular scenery, adrenalin packed activities and cultural experiences that will be incorporated into Tourism New Zealand's campaign work in India. (He will also deliver messages about safe driving).
Fraud Awareness Week 2015
Fraud Awareness Week is run by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's Consumer Protection team in support of a global education campaign. More information about protecting your business from fraud is available online on the Consumer Protection website.
Fraudsters use all kinds of clever tricks to steal from businesses. By taking sensible precautions, you can avoid becoming a victim. Almost $800,000 was lost from 35 small businesses that were the victims of cybercrime in 2014, according to NetSafe. That's an average of $22,521 for each victim. Small businesses have reported 309 incidents so far this year, compared with 106 during the same period of 2014.
2015 Biggest Scam Threats to Small Businesses
- Email scams: Hackers intercept business' emails, and then send false invoices to clients asking for payment to be made to an alternative bank account.
- Ransomware: Infection of a small business's computer system. Hackers will encrypt the victim's system and make computer files inaccessible. Hackers will often hold a business's files hostage until a Bitcoin ransom is received in exchange for poor or non-existent backups.
- Spear phishing: Targeted emails that requests payment or bank transfer of company funds to offshore accounts. This can involve the creation of almost duplicate domain names to increase the chance of success. It can also involve mimicking a small business email to get their customers to make payments to hackers.
- Invoice fraud: The sending of fake or dubious invoices to trick companies into renewing intellectual property registrations or enter online directories. The most significant this year has been the Corporate Portal scam – read the Commerce Commission's warning.
- Funding scams: The NZ Funding Grants website has tricked many small firms into paying fees to find grants that are non-existent. New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and the Commerce Commission have warned the public about this company.
Top 4 Tips to Prevent Being Caught Out
By taking sensible precautions you and your business can avoid becoming victims.
1. Stop
- Don't respond if you have any doubts that the company or product is fake.
- Don't open suspicious or unsolicited emails or letters.
- Don't click on any links in a spam email or open any files attached to them.
- Never reply to a spam email or letter.
- If you receive a call with an offer that sounds too good to be true - hang up.
- Call your bank immediately if you have sent your credit card details or paid money to a suspicious trader.
2. Check it out
- Don't assume a company is based in New Zealand just because the website address ends with .co.nz or .nz. Check on the Companies Office website.
- Check that payment pages look secure. Look for a padlock symbol and make sure the website address begins with "https" (the "s" stands for secure).
3. Find out more
- Type the company's name into a search engine, followed by the word "scam"- you may uncover stories from people who've been caught out by the same scam.
- Always check out a trader's contact details.
4. Report
- Report a scam and warn your friends and trading partners.
Tools for Business: WeTransfer
If you need to transfer or send files and you reach the limit of outgoing and incoming mail servers, take a look at WeTransfer. It's a cloud-based file transfer service based in Amsterdam designed to send small to large files.
It offers users a free and paid service. In the free service, WeTransfer users can send files up to 2GB. Plus is the upgrade service and enables 20GB transfers – great for transferring entire HD videos, huge sets of photos and work files. Aside from 20GB, Plus comes with a few additional features such as customized styles for your backgrounds, a personal URL and customized emails; password protected transfers and long term storage.
Is it easy to use? In a nutshell, yes. Simply go to wetransfer.com:
- Click on the + sign and add the files you want to send.
- Type in the email address of the person you're sending the files to.
- Now type in your own email address.
- Write a short message, if you want too.
- Then simply hit the transfer button and done.
Top Tourism Site of the Month
This month's Top Tourism Site Award goes to Kauri Park Motel.
This website is a well-produced, effective marketing tool: soft, muted colours in the background design which create a clean, simple and contemporary feel, clear main navigation with good use of icons, evocative photography (although a little lacking in vibrancy - perhaps pictures showing people having a good time would bring the motel representation to life a little more), easy to read headings and page text and a good level of optimisation with keywords in all the right locations behind the scenes and on page.
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