Visitors to New Zealand are highly satisfied with their holiday
experiences in this country, rating them 9.0 out of 10 on average.
Activities, the environment and accommodation are the three areas
of a New Zealand holiday that impact the most on overall
experience.
Overall satisfaction and recommendation
Overall, visitors to New Zealand during the July 2008 to June
2009 period (2008/09) were very satisfied with their New Zealand
holidays, rating their experiences 9.0 out of 10 on average.
Nine out of 10 visitors were highly satisfied with their New
Zealand experiences. This rate has been consistent for the past two
years.
Almost all visitors (97 per cent), state that they are likely or
very likely to recommend New Zealand if asked by someone else. The
same proportion of visitors also said they had spoken or written
positively of New Zealand to others, although this does not imply
recommendation.
Almost all (98 per cent) of visitors said they were most likely
to recommend New Zealand when talking to others in person,
reinforcing that word of mouth remains one of the most effective
ways of marketing New Zealand.
What drives overall satisfaction?
In 2008/09, Tourism New Zealand's Visitor Experience Monitor
looked at seven areas of the visitor experience:
The research looked at overall satisfaction with each of these
areas, and statistical modelling allowed Tourism New Zealand to
identify which aspects of a New Zealand holiday are of most
importance to visitors and their overall holiday experience.
Each of these seven areas was then broken down into more
detailed aspects (such as price and quality of service), which were
again statistically modelled to derive importance.
Across all of the visitors surveyed, each holiday component
contributed as follows to overall satisfaction with New Zealand
Proportion of overall satisfaction attributed to this
aspect of the New Zealand holiday experience:
- Activities: 32%
- Environment: 19%
- Accommodation: 14%
- Transport: 10%
- Safety: 10%
- Food and Beverage: 9%
- i-SITEs: 6%
The importance of activities in driving overall satisfaction
is influenced by the wide range and number of activities that
visitors take part in. For example, visitors from the United
States and Australia participate in an
average of just under 15 different types of activities while in New
Zealand. Visitors from other Western markets participate in around
20 activities, while those from Asian markets only participate in
around 14.
The two aspects that are most influential in driving overall
satisfaction are satisfaction with activities (an average rating of 8.9 out of
10) and the environment (8.9 out of 10). Although
average satisfaction with these areas is high, in cases where
satisfaction with them is lower there is a significant likelihood
that overall visitor satisfaction will be lower.
While satisfaction with safety (8.7 out of 10) and i-SITE Visitor
Centres (8.7 out of 10) is high, these aspects have less impact on
overall visitor satisfaction. They are less influential because
most visitors have a consistent experience with these areas.
Accommodation and domestic transport
have reasonably high levels of satisfaction at an average 8.4 out
of 10, with food and beverage satisfaction the
lowest of the seven aspects of a holiday at 8.1 (although
satisfaction is still high in absolute terms).