Southern Great Barrier Reef Promo Ramps up in New Zealand
Posted on February 28th, 2020
No surprises that Kiwis love Queensland, with the Gold Coast and Brisbane their main port of call into our Sunshine State, with direct flights into the Sunshine Coast also commencing later this year.
New Zealand is also one of our top five international western source markets to the greater Southern Great Barrier Reef destination attracting 16,000 visitors to the SGBR to year ending September 2019.
Our kiwi friends love to ‘flop and drop’ so the less driving the better, which is why promoting flights Auckland to Brisbane connecting with Rockhampton return plus hire car is something we are proactively marketing to both trade and consumers, particularly direct from the NZ capital.
Our islands and coastline are the hook, so the work we have achieved with our tourism industry in contracting with tourism trade distribution channels is being realized with direct bookings.
Recently, Capricorn Enterprise CEO, Mary Carroll attended a Tourism Trade event in Auckland, organized thanks to Tourism and Events Queensland. It’s been a few years since we’ve caught up with our NZ trade face to face, so the opportunity was welcomed and our main trade partners in Auckland, including House of Travel, Go Holidays, Flight Centre and Air New Zealand were very keen to hear about the product updates to our greater SGBR destination.
Then over the weekend, Mary attended the Flight Centre Expo on the Tourism and Events Queensland booth with colleagues from the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, along with our TEQ NZ Manager Mandy Veale. The Southern Great Barrier Reef was the only destination outside of the south east corner with representation which worked out to our great advantage and even though as ‘team Queensland’ we fielded queries for other destinations and could assist consumers, promoting the SGBR was received exceptionally well from consumers.
Taking advantage of the cheap flights Auckland to Brisbane return on offer only at the show, one family booked a ten day holiday with return flights, car hire and accommodation in Yeppoon and Great Keppel Island!
Another couple booked their Auckland to Brisbane to Rocky return flights on the day and have since followed up with their ground content bookings after making email contact with Capricorn Enterprise.
There were many others who either booked or took a copy of our packages and SGBR guide to consider our destination. 130 of our SGBR guides were taken by interested consumers and Mary spent an average of 15 minutes with very genuine enquiries and assisted with suggested itineraries.
It was found that about 50% of queries were from people who knew where they wanted to visit in Qld and just wanted some additional information and assistance. The other 50% of queries were people open to suggestions, so a huge opportunity.
We were surprised by the number of South Africans working in NZ, but these enquiries were great as they want to visit Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef for the first time, so offering our destination was very well received.
Against Global competition with Fiji our biggest competition in the NZ market, these three days of business were very successful indeed!
Our Southern Great Barrier Reef destination will now also be attending the two day Queensland on Tour New Zealand at the end of March, as we need to continue the great momentum we have picked up. This event will involve one on one meetings over a full day of tourism trade meetings as well as an industry networking event. Thirty five Queensland representatives from industry operators and Regional Tourism Organisations will be in attendance, with the SGBR continuing to promote our easy flight access and incredible coast and island destination.
