New NZ campaign to boost visitors year-round

Tourism New Zealand is kicking things off early this year, launching its annual campaign three months ahead of schedule.

According to Radio NZ, the campaign is taking its focus to boosting off-peak visitors, as well as targeting the swelling numbers over summer.

The agency has taken its marketing spend for spring and autumn from $8 million to nearly $60 million, as it tries to spread the visitor load.

But, as per Radio NZ, some tourism experts have warned that some parts of the country may not be able to cope with the year-round influx.

The tourism body’s new ‘100 percent Pure’ campaign will be launched on July 1, aimed at smoothing the various dips and rises in tourism as visitor numbers are expected to hit a record high of three million for the year.

Tourism NZ said it had boosted spending on promoting the shoulder months from 12% of its total budget last year to 80% this year, due to hotels becoming overcrowded in summer, while the country risked losing tourists elsewhere, writes Radio NZ.

Marketing director Andrew Fraser told the radio station that investment in accommodation had not kept up with the growth in tourists.

“Auckland was pretty much full and similarly Queenstown but if we actually look nationally at accommodation figures for hotels and resorts, which a lot of our mid to long-haul tourists will be using, it was up over 90% occupancy level nationally, which starts to say that actually in that peak period of February we are pretty much starting to get full,” Fraser said.

The new campaign has been welcomed by a number of tourism businesses, with Northland tour bus operator Garth Petricevich saying he mainly fills his buses with visitors from September to March.

“Coming up to Christmas it’s mainly New Zealanders, once the New Zealanders go back to work you start getting the foreigners, and then after the schools go back you tend to get a lot of Europeans,” he told Radio NZ.

“[We’re] starting to see a lot more Chinese come through, they used to come through in bus groups and now they’re actually coming through as individuals. There’s a lot of Germans coming north, the Germans seem to love it up here.”

Petricevich said at the height of the season his business took 350 tourists a day to Cape Reinga alone.

“We just put on as many buses as we have to. That’s the only time of the year you can make your money so you have to make your money,” Petricevich said.

Seasonality has been a big problem for Northland’s $575 million tourism industry where the 60% peak occupancy levels of January suddenly slump to 25% come low season.

Petricevich said any push to lure visitors off-peak would be good for his 40-year-old family business and good for Kaitaia.

The head of AUT’s New Zealand Tourism Research Institute Simon Milne told Radio NZ that attracting off-peak visitors was the right move, but only if the surge was well managed.

Milne said some places were already struggling with tourism-related problems like freedom camping, while overcrowding in summer threw up a much bigger issue for the country.

“The fact that you’re saying that we need to spread tourism into the shoulder season is partly driven by the fact that during our peak season now we are reaching over capacity and what we have to realise is that over time we will continue to grow in numbers and we will have to manage those numbers carefully.”

“We’ll have to manage how we cope with those numbers as a country.”

Tourism New Zealand said parts of the industry suffered from growing pains, but it was well equipped to tackle these issues, with a few strategies tucked up its sleeve.

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Latest comments

AUSSIEtraveller says:
June 16, 2015 at 12:35 pm
cheap airfares get people moving. With Virgin/Air NZ dumping seats today, that’ll work.
Many people seem to book their flights to NZ & then worry about accommodation etc. after, rather than see what total cost will work out to be.
Guess familiarity with NZ & NZ prices helps.
For Europe & USA/Canada, most want to know a rough all up cost before they start.
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