I’ve just attended the Maori Tourism Conference in Taupo. What a great vibe at this conference, with plenty of evidence of entrepreneurial activities taking place all around the country. I’ll probably put up a couple of posts on different topics, but first …

Kylie Ruwhiu-Karawana from Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) talked about international markets and the opportunities for Maori tourism. Trends in tourism include:

• low-cost airlines are making short regional breaks increasingly popular (meaning travelers are less inclined to make the long haul flight to NZ - however, this development is good for visitors from Australia)
• travelers are looking for experiences, not just destinations
• other markets are now promoting their environment to the global marketplace, using marketing techniques similar to ours – some of these destinations are closer to travelers than we are
• the internet is a great information gathering and booking tool – we have to become more web savvy to compete with other markets using this channel.

Such is the potential volume of tourists that we can’t (and don’t want to) fit everyone in. Instead, TNZ is targeting visitors who want an ‘interactive experience’ (meaning travelers who do more than just sit on the bus, ticking each city off a list). Australia provides the highest number of visitors, followed by the United Kingdom, North America, China/Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Germany.

TNZ research shows that activities in the natural environment drive visitor satisfaction. The primary motivators for travelers choosing to visit are our landscape and scenery.

In terms of cultural experiences, those of most interest to visitors are:

1. natural wonders
2. experiencing local cuisine
3. historic buildings
4. sites important to a country’s history
5. learning about a different culture.

Kylie says that visitors come here to interact with nature, but engagement with our people is increasingly attractive too. The glue between the two is the interpretation that the guides and operators provide – the stories that link landscape and people.

For example, culture is not a ‘must do’ for Australian visitors, but they do want to learn more about it. Kylie suggested that we can service this need via the activities that more immediately attract these visitors (eg bush walks, whale watching etc).

Kylie concluded that New Zealand has to have more than one dimension to present to international travelers. New Zealand’s brand needs to be more than just beautiful land – it’s about connecting with the people and sharing cultural experiences and stories.

The presentation generated some searching questions from delegates about the representations of Maori culture in TNZ’s promotional materials. Is culture low in travelers’ motivations because it’s not highly visible in our international marketing campaign? If the natural environment is being claimed by other markets, will our point of difference be our people and our culture, rather than scenery and landscapes – largely unpeopled landscapes at that – appearing in current promotions?

Bruce Elder, travel writer for the Sydney Morning Herald (check out Bruce’s blog about his travels around New Zealand), talked about how the Maori tourism experience is much more diverse and rich than tourists realise. Tourists tend to think that they can get round the country in three weeks, so Bruce proposed we launch a campaign explaining that ‘we’re really quite big and not really very cold’!

The importance of communicating the diversity of our offerings is also true for New Zealand culture more broadly. This, and the potential for Maori tourism to be a point of difference in the global marketplace, needs to be addressed in our long-term planning for tourism. An earlier post on this blog commented on the fact that cultural tourism is missing from TNZ’s draft tourism strategy (recently released for consultation). Get your submissions in!

Kylie’s excellent presentation included data on the main visitor markets, such as number of visitors, average spend, length of stay, drivers for satisfaction and popular activities and experiences. This is useful for any cultural organisation or business wanting to build international audiences. You can find more of this market research on TNZ’s webite. If I get hold of Kylie’s powerpoint, I’ll add it to this post.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 11:59 am and is filed under Research, Building audiences, Cultural tourism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.