An audience of 3.9 million Americans saw New Zealand star in the
two-hour season finale of America's Next Top Model last night.
A highlight of the final episode was an in-flight challenge in
which contestants had to strut their stuff down the aisle of an Air
New Zealand aircraft. There were also photo shoots in Glenorchy and
Rakino Island's Hurakia Lodge, with the final runway show taking
place at Auckland Museum.
Tourism New Zealand and Air New Zealand jointly hosted the
America's Next Top Model judges, contestants and crew for three
episodes of filming in November and December last year.
Visits to the US gateway of Tourism New Zealand's www.newzealand.com website have doubled since
the first of these episodes was broadcast.
Tourism New Zealand Chief Executive Kevin Bowler says the project
succeeded in raising awareness of New Zealand in our third-largest
visitor market, and underlined the importance of partnerships in
extending the value of marketing spend.
"Bringing shows like America's Next Top Model to New Zealand to
film allows us to build on the '100% Pure New Zealand' campaign by
showing Americans what they can actually experience when they come
here on holiday.
"By working with Air New Zealand to offer a price-point for
travel to New Zealand and running joint advertising around the New
Zealand episodes we're able to start converting this interest in
New Zealand into actual travel, and encourage bookings."
The America's Next Top Model project is the first major result
to come out of a new long term partnership between Air New Zealand
and Tourism New Zealand, which aims to grow visitor arrivals from
the US from 200,000 to around 300,000 by 2014.
A joint website - www.gonewzealand.com - was launched in late
April by the two organisations. More than 33,500 people have
already visited the website, which has special offers on Air New
Zealand flights and holidays, and information designed to inspire
Americans to plan and book travel to New Zealand.
An audience of 3.2 million Americans watched the first New
Zealand episode on 28 April, with a further 35 million exposed to
coverage of the show online. The second episode was watched last
week (5 May) by 3.4 million people.
This PR coup for New Zealand comes just after Prime Minister and
Minister of Tourism John Key's announcement yesterday morning that
the Government will allocate an additional
NZD30 million to tourism marketing in this year's budget.