The acquisition was part of the airline’s strategy to complement its core business by clipping the ticket in other tourism sectors.
Tourism Exchange New Zealand was formed as a joint venture between Air New Zealand and V3 that was enthusiastically promoted as a "neutral business to business market place for tourism suppliers and distributors. Through the Tourism Exchange, participants can contract and transact New Zealand tourism product with live availability and dynamic pricing.”
Many found the Tourism Exchange offer confusing and we wondered how many tourism operators experienced success using the platform? We suspect that returns were not as high as were predicted and we felt that there was a disconnect between Tourism Exchange personnel and Kiwi tourism operators.
In our post HERE back in December 2008, we asked the question:
"Has this venture got wings, or will it get lost in the scrum of existing providers?"We note with interest that Tourism Exchange abruptly pulled out of a recent tourism conference necessitating the organizers to find last minute presenters and there are also rumors doing the rounds that their offices are about to be closed down in New Zealand.
Has Tourism Exchange become another casualty that naively assumed success by partnering with a well known tourism brand and underestimated the complexities of New Zealand's tourism market?
We would be interested if any of our dear readers can inform us further....
