Tourism New Zealand Chief, George Hickton appears on TV3 News and discusses the opening of TRENZ in Auckland this week, tourism arrivals to date and the potential for the summer season ahead. Interestingly Hickton is still loyal to the 100% Pure branding and hopes that it will stick around for at least another 10 years.
Watch the video HERE
The expensive mainstream media "Coke style" campaigns used by Tourism NZ that showcase our fantastic NZ landscapes and stirring NZ music are inspiring to local tourism operators, however the reach on a world stage and effectiveness to attract potential tourists is frustratingly limited.
Tourism NZ has recently entered the domain of social media with its mobile film studio that is a converted shipping container where tourists were able to send online postcards to friends and family via YouTube. Again, this initiative created great localised feel-good publicity as it toured throughout New Zealand, however it can be argued that the uploaded videos hardly caused a ripple in cyberspace.
After spending $600,000 on the YouTube campaign it was reported: "Viral marketing was new ground for the tourism marketing body, and chief executive George Hickton had no idea how to measure whether it worked."
In our predictions for 2009 post, we wrote that we expected to see a "freshening and reinvigorating" of the 100% Pure NZ. brand. We predicted that there will be a subtle move away from reliance on solely marketing natural landscapes.
As an industry, tourism is being crushed by publicly funded institutionalised bureaucracy that is out of proportion to the industry it is supposed to serve. The tourism industry is at risk of becoming too dependent on the productivity of others and needs to become more innovative and self reliant. Quite simply, in our opinion the New Zealand taxpayer is not getting an acceptable ROI for their tourism spend.
We predicted that there would be a necessary shakeup at Tourism NZ and in order for this to happen, Hickton needs to go. An industry insider has informed us that this will likely occur before the end of this year.
Watch this space.
