2020 New Zealand Tourism and Product Development Trends

How can you ensure your  business remains ahead of your competition as worldwide tourism growth is slowing down?
It's not difficult, but you need to take time to think and plan.

In my discussions with visitors, tourism operators, inbound operators, wholesalers, RTO’s, Tourism New Zealand and from the international research I’ve done, these are the trends I see for the coming year(s).

• Product development trends
  • The types of products that visitors are looking for are authentic, personalised experiences. This is something that especially smaller businesses can offer as they are often owner-operated. The passion these operators have for their product shines through. Large businesses get bigger and in the process they tend to lose their personal touch.
  • Multi-day experiences or packages.
  • Off the beaten track and rural experiences
  • Wellness experiences
  • Development of products for niche markets
  • Environmentally sustainable experiences.

• ​Personalisation. There’s a shift back to personal interaction with customers. Sure, social media will remain important, but visitors want to get immersed in the local culture and people.
• Focus on the customer experience every step of the way. There are some businesses that are really good at marketing themselves, but they don’t deliver what they promise. In this day and age of online reviews, these companies will suffer. The businesses that go the extra mile, focus on delivering an exceptional experience throughout the sales funnel, are the ones who will thrive. Training your staff and having great systems is part of delivering a consistently amazing customer experience.
• Customer retention. This goes hand in hand with customer experience and product development. What new product or experience can you offer past customers, what do you do you to keep in touch with them?
• Content marketing. Focus on quality and uniqueness in whatever you do! Don’t post of social media for the sake of it, only post high quality content. Developing a good content strategy will provide more relevant information to your customers, will personalise your experience more and will help you with Search Engine Optimisation.
  • Long form content is on the rise. Rather than short snippets of information, write more in-depth stories, or produce a longer video with more detailed information on a topic. Video holds prospective customers’ attention in a way that photos and text don’t.
• Social media will remain important, but do write regular blog post on your website. This is the only content you ‘own’. You can’t control what happens on social media platforms; they change the ‘rules’ all the time. Instagram and Linkedin are the platforms that are growing fastest.
• Co-operative marketing. I’m a great advocate of businesses working together as many businesses in New Zealand are small and the overheads can be high. By developing and marketing products together, while retaining your businesses 'personality', all involved will benefit.

To operate a successful tourism business, it's important to take time out and work ON your business.
Planning, executing, learning, reading. If you make this a habit, and set a specific time each week to work on this, I can guarantee you that your business will benefit.

If you need help improving your capability, do check out our:

• Tourism Business Success Programme and
• Agritourism Success Programme

Have a good rest of your week!
Kind regards, Marijke