TNZ wins digital marketing awards
<p>Tourism New Zealand landed awards for the most innovative social media campaign and as the best destinational marketing organisation at the TravelMole and EyeforTravel Innovation Awards in Singapore last night.</p>
<p>TravelMole Media Group is one of the world's leading on-line tourism publishers, reaching 400,000 tourism professionals and 90 million consumers in 132 countries.</p>
<p>Tourism New Zealand chief executive Kevin Bowler said the destinational marketing award recognised the transformation of <a href="http://www.newzealand.com/int/">newzealand.com</a> from a static source of information into a dynamic site carrying content from a wide range of sources alongside official information from Tourism New Zealand.</p>
<p>"Our ambition is to ensure that newzealand.com continues to meet the changing needs of online users," Mr Bowler said. "We see the site as a marketplace that connects potential visitors with tourism operators and travel sellers. The site is at the centre of our marketing strategy to convert preference into sales.</p>
<p>"Opening up the site's content so that local tourism operators, travel sellers, and visitors can share their New Zealand experiences has been a valuable shift. The ability to tap into real life experiences can be a key aspect in helping people to go ahead and book their dream holiday to New Zealand -- and we now have a breadth and depth of destination content that is second to none."</p>
<p>Tourism New Zealand's social media campaign award was for its New Zealand 100% Pure Facebook presence, which Mr Bowler said had become an integral platform for supporting Tourism New Zealand's digital marketing strategy.</p>
<p>"Surveys tell us that over two-thirds of travelers consider the recommendations of other travelers to be more credible than those of an advertisement, even if they don't know the other travelers. That underlines the immense potential power of social media.</p>
<p>"Our 100% Pure New Zealand Facebook presence has grown significantly in the past year. We've been successful at building a large community of fans and advocates -- people who love New Zealand and are happy to share their real-life experiences.</p>
<p>"Our role now is to curate and amplify the best content from the crowd. We've produced Facebook apps which fuel the community growth and these have been highly successfully at supporting marketing campaigns. By engaging with social media, we're also able to gain real insights into our consumers.</p>
<p>"We believe our social media strategy is proving highly effective in converting interest in New Zealand to actual arrivals, and it is very pleasing to see our approach recognised with this innovation award," Mr Bowler said.</p>
<p>Visit the New Zealand 100% Pure Facebook page <a href="http://www.facebook.com/purenewzealand">here</a>.</p>