Tourism in New Zealand

Posted by Gemma Dixon
Thursday, 17 May 2012 in General

The various presentations given at TRENZ last week gave some insight into where the big players of New Zealand tourism see things going in the near future.

One of the stand-out points was the new focus on the Indonesian market, and tapping into the 5.1 million Indonesian tourists who travelled outside of their country in 2010. There is huge potential to target the affluent middle class Indonesian market and promote New Zealand as their next destination. For this to happen a fundamental change of perception is required – Indonesians view New Zealand as quiet and boring with lots of sheep – a perception that is fundamentally outdated.

And in terms of our competition for access to this market, we are competing with the likes of Europe. It is a similar cost (if not slightly cheaper) for them to get to Europe. So we need to find a way to make New Zealand seem more attractive than Europe!

To help bring people to New Zealand the Government and Tourism New Zealand are focusing on a number of initiatives:

• Creating better connectivity and access with increased flight routes
• Leveraging off major events in New Zealand, such as the World Cup and the upcoming Hobbit movies
• Increase awareness of how much there is to do in New Zealand and move beyond just the scenery and landscapes we can offer.

One of the big initiatives currently is the Hobbit movies, and using their release to our advantage. Great success was seen with the Lord of the Rings trilogy over the past few years, and these movies have helped to cement the perception of New Zealand’s beautiful landscapes, but now the challenge is also to move beyond the landscapes and scenery we can offer and also promote the amazing experiences that can be had here.

The Hobbit movies highlight New Zealand as a great place to visit, a great place to do business, and a great place for film production, and we can use the attention surrounding their release to our advantage to help promote our country and what we can offer, thus expanding the world’s perception of our country as a tourist destination.

The marketing around the movies is going to be focused on the theme “Fantasy is Reality”, and creating awareness that what appears to be fantasy in the movie (with the landscape and backdrop) is actually a reality and can be seen and experienced right here in New Zealand. The messages will be tied into the “100% Pure” message – “100% Middle Earth, 100% Pure New Zealand”, and will focus on some key locations from the movie and turning them into promotion of an activity that can be done in that location.

Hobbit Stats:
Some of the stats cited by Catherine Bates of Tourism New Zealand were:

• 6% of visitors to New Zealand in 2004 said one of the main reasons to visit was the Lord of the Rings movies
• 63,200 visitors participated in a Lord of the Rings related activity
• The “active considerer” (i.e. those who know about New Zealand already and actively want to come here) is the target market being focused on, and 31% of them are fans of the movie.