Air New Zealand and Tourism New Zealand have today announced a $20 million extension to their marketing partnership.
The airline signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Tourism New Zealand last year to undertake joint marketing activity promoting travel to New Zealand in key international markets.
Today's announcement, which will see the partnership continue through financial year 2015, will extend cooperative marketing activity to include Singapore and South East Asia, in support of Air New Zealand's proposed alliance with Singapore Airlines.
Air New Zealand Chief Executive Christopher Luxon says the extension of the partnership will allow the organisations to continue to build on the success of their initial agreement.
"Working together to capitalise on this momentum is a natural progression that will positively impact New Zealand's tourism industry and is a wonderful example of collaboration which supports the Tourism Industry Association's Tourism 2025 framework for growth," says Mr Luxon.
"Our joint activity to market The Hobbit films offshore has been incredibly successful. The most recent campaign resulted in not only strong fare sales but also showed the activity really resonated with our target audiences with a recent survey showing 14 percent of holiday arrivals were influenced to travel to New Zealand by the movies."
Tourism New Zealand Chief Executive Kevin Bowler says the pair has a strong track record of working together and achieving measurable results.
"Visitor arrivals are up more than five percent to 2.75 million international visitors in the year to March. Notably, the growth we are seeing is being driven by holiday arrivals from the key markets that our agreement enabled increased joint activity in - including China, the UK, Europe and North America as well as our new priority emerging markets India and Indonesia.
"We know that working in partnerships extends the reach and effectiveness of our campaigns, and I look forward to continuing to collaborate with Air New Zealand to build on the positive results we have achieved to date."
"Under the MoU, Air New Zealand and Tourism New Zealand will each invest $10 million over the next 12 months in co-operative marketing activity in the key markets of Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, North America, the United Kingdom and Europe as well as increased activity in emerging markets such as India, Indonesia and Latin America.
The activity will also target high-value visitors targeting the lucrative Premium and Business Events sectors.
Source Tourism NZ
