9 December 2004

New Northland tourism website gives region an edge

Northland has gained a significant advantage over the rest of the country by becoming the first region to align its visitor information website with Tourism New Zealand’s site.

The new Northland website, northlandnz.com, draws information directly from the Tourism New Zealand site, newzealand.com (which also uses the address purenz.com).

This means the Northland site will receive more visitors by leveraging off Tourism New Zealand’s international marketing campaigns. The newzealand.com site is New Zealand’s main online presence for international visitors.

As well as benefiting from additional traffic, a wide range of tourism products and services are featured on the Northland site encouraging regional spread and increasing the probability that visitors will stay longer and spend more while they are here.

The new Northland site, which will be officially launched on December 9, has been developed as part of the major regional initiative (MRI) Activate Northland. This is a partnership between business, Destination Northland, Enterprise Northland and New Zealand Trade & Enterprise.

Enterprise Northland project manager Kiri Goulter said: “We’re aware that other regions are looking at ways to match what we have achieved, but Northland has a huge head start.”

She said the new visitor information site was phase one of the e-technology programme within the Activate Northland project. A Northland portal, encompassing other Northland industry sectors, is under development for launch next year.

Ms Goulter said tourism had been identified in Northland’s regional economic strategy in 2001 as an industry likely to lead future economic growth, development and employment in the region.

More recently, the Ministry of Tourism forecast that tourism would earn Northland $1 billion a year by 2010, making it the biggest contributor to the regional economy.

“Those figures also indicated that Northland could outperform the expectations if we could attract more international visitors and encourage them to stay in the region longer and spend more,” said Ms Goulter.

“The new website allows Northland’s tourism industry to do exactly that, by aligning ourselves with Tourism New Zealand, raising our profile with international visitors and showcasing our full range of options.”

The Northland website was created by the same company which developed the Tourism New Zealand site.

ENDS

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