Tourism Marketing #4: List Your Product on NewZealand.com & More…© NZPocketGuide.com
Tourism Marketing #4: List Your Product on NewZealand.com & More…

Tourism Marketing #04: List Your Product on NewZealand.com & More…

© NZPocketGuide.com

Where Your Tourism Business Should be Featured Online

This is the part where I am supposed to tell you all the good stuff about our own website but the fact of the matter is that the Tourism New Zealand website, NewZealand.com, is the largest New Zealand tourism-related website for both the local and international market. For this reason alone, you SHOULD be on it! After that, there are a few other New Zealand tourism-related online platforms you should also be on as a standard, and some that you shouldn’t – at least not straight away. I will go through all of this and more in this fourth instalment of our tourism marketing guide.

A Note About This Tourism Marketing Guide

If you are just stumbling upon this page randomly or through a search engine, lucky you. But before you keep going, you should read the introductory article to this series of tourism marketing guides. That way, you will get a bit of context about the tone and the content within it.

This article follows directly from Tourism Marketing #3: Get Striking Imagery for Your Website.

Tourism Marketing #4: List Your Product on NewZealand.com & More…© NewZealand.com

Creating and Updating Your NewZealand.com Listing

Registering on NewZealand.com and listing your business is fairly easy. In fact, there is a very good guide on this tourismnewzealand.com page to help you get started.

Once registered on the site, you can create a company profile, list tours and even create deals that, in turn, will be promoted to the local and international market. NewZealand.com even links to some Regional Tourism Organisation’s (RTO’s) websites and vice versa for some collaboration.

Make sure to update your page regularly and that your deals are always up-to-date. This sort of task I like to keep on my online calendar. For instance, if you create yourself a reminder to update your listing on January 1st and June 1st and repeat it yearly, you’ll be set for life.

Tourism Marketing #4: List Your Product on NewZealand.com & More…© NZPocketGuide.com

Should You Go the Qualmark Way?

Tourism New Zealand tends to push Qualmark quite heavily. I feel that paying the exorbitant Qualmark fee right from the get-go is not a necessity. We have done a fair amount of research on the subject and have found no correlation between Qualmark ratings and travellers’ interest. Hold off on this for now and spend your money elsewhere.

Instead, take a peek at your competition. See how they list themselves, what they have chosen as their main selling, and find how to set yourself apart. Find more tips on finding your unique selling point in Tourism Marketing #1: Know What You are Selling.

Tourism Marketing #4: List Your Product on NewZealand.com & More…© westcoast.co.nz

Should You Register With Your RTO/DMO?

You should absolutely register with your Regional Tourism Organisation/Destination Management Organisation. (Aren’t you glad that I spelt out that whole charade?!) We will talk about this in the next article of this series about expanding your sales channels. I just wasn’t sure where to put this section and I thought it’d fit better in the next part of this series, Tourism Marketing #5: Expanding Your Sales Channels.

Tourism Marketing #4: List Your Product on NewZealand.com & More…© NZPocketGuide.com

Check Out the Second Largest Website for Travellers in New Zealand

Although NewZealand.com is a great tool to inspire a lot of viewers, we have built NZPocketGuide.com as a direct response to the Tourism New Zealand website. We love how inspirational it is but when it comes down to actually planning your trip and getting real on-the-ground advice and tips, getting professional traveller writer’s advice, and creating to-do lists tailored to your own itinerary, NewZealand.com simply doesn’t fill these needs for travellers. For this reason, we’ve built our website around practical advice that truly help travellers make the most of their holidays.

Learn more about the NZ Pocket Guide story in Tourism Marketing #2: Know What You are Selling.

Do You Want to be Featured on NZ Pocket Guide?

If you want your business to be featured on New Zealand’s largest and most popular travel guide, we’re just a quick email away. Just head to our contact page. Plus, if you mention this article series, we’ll shout you 20% OFF your first year ad campaign – just like that!

Tourism Marketing #4: List Your Product on NewZealand.com & More…© Tourism New Zealand

The Stages of Travel Planning

In tourism marketing, there are four fundamental stages of travel planning that we refer to throughout making our marketing strategy. These can help you in choosing the right platforms and websites to list your products. For those of you who are not familiar, the online booking journey goes as follows:

DREAM > This is when travellers are daydreaming at work about their trip to (or in) New Zealand. They see stunning Instagram posts, inspiring Facebook stories, and are pushed to view content on NewZealand.com from there. The Tourism New Zealand site lands right between the DREAM and the PLAN & BOOK stage.

PLAN & BOOK > This is when travellers have made the decision to travel to (or in) New Zealand. It’s the time when travellers are planning their trip, picking various destinations to spend time, and what accommodations or activities to book. They are also likely to choose their transportation method and make the appropriate bookings. In short, this stage is when all the major decisions are made. Providing expert advice to travellers planning their New Zealand trip is where we have positioned NZ Pocket Guide. It may sound a bit pretentious, but the wealth of answers and content on our website makes us the kings of the “PLAN & BOOK” stage. How do we know? NZPocketGuide.com received over 6.3 million unique readers in 2019 alone with over 22 million pages served and it grows year after year. For those reasons and more, it may sound a bit like a sales pitch, but when your budget allows, it may be well worth it to have a chat with us about featuring your experience on our website. Our plans start at under NZ$450+gst per year!

TRAVEL > This is when travellers are joining your tour, hiring your campervan, staying in your accommodation, etc. and you show them a good time. This is when you build an experience that is so memorable that they will forget about the dreadfully long flight, the hard-earned cash they had to spare, and the unpredictable New Zealand weather. This stage is the ultimate pay-off after all those promises during the stages above.

SHARE > This is when you incentivise your clients to leave reviews, share their experience with their friends, and get that “word of mouth” momentum going. But this is a story for another day. In fact, it is the tenth and final article of this series so keep going, you’re almost there!

Continue Reading the Tourism Marketing Guides…

To keep going with this article series, check out Tourism Marketing #5: Expand Your Sales Channels or go back and start fresh with the 10 Tips to Promote Your New Zealand Travel Business.

Sources:

The information in this guide has been compiled from our extensive research, travel and experiences across New Zealand and the South Pacific, accumulated over more than a decade of numerous visits to each destination. Additional sources for this guide include the following:

    Our editorial standards: At NZ Pocket Guide, we uphold strict editorial standards to ensure accurate and quality content.

    About The Author

    Laura S.

    This article has been reviewed and published by Laura, the editor-in-chief and co-founder of NZ Pocket Guide. Laura is a first-class honours journalism graduate and a travel journalist with expertise in New Zealand and South Pacific tourism for over 10 years. She also runs travel guides for five of the top destinations in the South Pacific and is the co-host of over 250 episodes of the NZ Travel Show on YouTube.

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