The Tourism Business Takes to the Airwaves

Domestic spending may be tightening, but tourists still have plenty of money to spend, and now tourism enterprises have a new way to reach them.

New Zealand’s lucrative tourism industry is set to benefit from the launch of a new radio station for tourists – the first of its kind in New Zealand.

Tourism Radio is essentially a unique radio station featuring New Zealand music, entertaining radio shows with a distinctive local flavour and area information relevant to the region a tourist is travelling through.

The Tourism Radio hardware is discretely fitted onto the windscreen of rental cars and uses its unique IntelliPoint system to draw the driver’s attention to prominent landmarks and highlights as the vehicle approaches them.

In addition to being useful for the tourists, advertisers are finding it an equally effective way to target the lucrative tourism market more specifically than has ever been possible, directing them to local attractions as they approach them.

Mr Braddock says it’s the targeted content of Tourism Radio that makes it an attractive marketing vehicle for kiwi tourism enterprises.

“Our listeners are 100% tourists, travelling around New Zealand looking for attractions, accommodation and places to spend their money. If you want to target tourists then with Tourism Radio there will be no wasted marketing dollars reaching the wrong audience”, he says.

Mr Braddock says the level of enthusiasm from advertisers has been matched by the Regional Tourism Organisations (RTO’s), 29 local government funded bodies responsible for marketing their regions domestically and internationally.

“The response from the Regional Tourism Organisations contacted has been really positive, with the majority all having indicated a strong interest in supporting and promoting Tourism Radio in their region,” he says.

The Tourism Radio business model has proven to be a success overseas. After originally starting in Cape Town, South Africa in 2005, you can now find Tourism Radio in tourism hotspots like Hawaii and Spain.

Find out more about this new tourism enterprise at www.tourismradio.co.nz.