International tourism is a fiercely competitive industry. For
New Zealand to be able to compete, and to provide enough visitors
to sustain and grow the New Zealand tourism industry, it needs an
organisation to effectively and consistently promote what's special
about New Zealand.
New Zealand is a destination renowned for its natural beauty and
the friendliness of its people. Almost 100 per cent of our visitors
are satisfied or highly satisfied with their holidays here and
tourism to New Zealand grew faster than many other destinations
over the 1990s and early 2000s.
So why do we need an organisation to market our country?
Boom times
In the last 50 years, tourism worldwide has been booming and so
has global competition to attract visitors. This was propelled by
the emergence of jet airplanes as an affordable and accessible
method of travel and by increased leisure time. Hundreds of
millions of people now travel globally every year, with worldwide
travel expected to increase to 1.6 billion by 2020.
With more travellers exploring the world, an increasing number
of countries are starting to recognise the economic benefits from
tourism and wanting to promote themselves to get their share of
this massive industry. Many of these countries have similar
offerings to New Zealand, are closer to the main travel source
markets of America and Europe, and have far larger marketing
budgets.
This means that although our tourism growth has been good, New
Zealand still remains a very small player in the global tourism
marketplace.
Fresh ideas
This competitive environment dictates that fresh ideas are
always needed to make New Zealand, its culture and landscapes stand
out from what the rest of the globe has on offer.
This is not something that most individual tourism operators are
equipped to do. Many can't afford to market themselves overseas and
for those who can and do, their priority for their budget is to
market their own product, not New Zealand.
However, well before potential visitors are going to think about
visiting the different regions of New Zealand or taking part in
specific tourism activities, they will need to have a clearer
picture of the country as a whole to give them a bigger incentive
to come this far.
Many of our visitors first need to be educated about even such
basic information as where New Zealand is located and how the
international date line works. Then, they need to know what this
country's unique offerings are; they need the bigger picture to
convince them that what the destination offers overall is going to
make for a wonderful holiday. Only then will they be interested in
considering individual tourism activities.
Tourism New Zealand is the organisation that fuels the desires
of the world's travellers to visit our shores and to ensure that
New Zealand remains attractive internationally as a visitor
destination.
Find out
more about What We Do and How