To herald in the summer season, Tourism New Zealand has launched
a fresh marketing offensive in China and expanded its digital
campaigns in Japan, USA, Canada, UK and Germany.
Tourism New Zealand General Manager of Marketing Communications
Justin Watson says the expanded China campaign aims to capitalise
on increased flights to New Zealand from China and nearby South
East Asian travel hubs; and a return to travel post concerns over
Swine Flu.
The campaign will see a big push into targeted digital marketing
and placement of New Zealand marketing material on 20,000 taxi
touchscreens and thousands of office building LCD screens in
Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
LCD screens and touchscreens in taxis have been used in Beijing
and Shanghai in previous years but the campaign has been expanded
to include Guangzhou in 2010.
"There are now some charter flights linking Guangzhou to
New Zealand and it's close to the travel hub of Hong Kong, so
it makes sense for us to expand our China marketing campaign to the
Guangzhou area," Justin Watson says.
The new campaign signifies a change of strategy for Tourism New
Zealand as the organisation moves to target the
Active Considerer market as a result of new research just
completed. Active Considerers are people who are already
considering travelling to New Zealand.
"Our efforts in China involve placement of carefully targeted
banner ads and interactive content on popular travel-related
websites. Search engine optimisation is also being used to ensure
people searching for travel information online are directed to
websites with strong New Zealand content," Justin Watson
says.
Similar digital campaigns targeting Active Considerers have
kicked off in Japan, USA, Canada, UK and Germany with the goal of
providing a boost to tourist numbers this summer.
The campaigns include placement of Tourism New Zealand banners
and interactive content on popular travel and news websites,
including Trip Advisor and the websites of the BBC, New York Times
and Tokyo's Nikkei newspaper.
To bolster marketing efforts further, Tourism New Zealand has
also entered into joint ventures with Air New Zealand in the USA,
Canada and Germany, and with Singapore Airlines in the UK.
New Zealand's eight largest visitor markets in August were Australia, USA, China, UK, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Canada.
Visitor arrival figures for September will be released next
week.