Waitomo Glowworm Caves celebrates New Zealand Chinese Language Week with photography workshop and increased language skills.

Media Release September 28th 2018

Waitomo Glowworm Caves, one of New Zealand's most popular tourist attractions, has celebrated New Zealand Chinese Language Week with a number of initiatives designed to cater to the Chinese visitor. Chinese visitors account for 11% of visitor arrivals into New Zealand, making it our second largest source market. With the opportunity to get in touch with nature being the main driver of Chinese visitor numbers, the popularity of Waitomo with Chinese visitors comes as little surprise.

This week, a group of Chinese photographers - a mix of amateurs and professionals - took part in a rare photography workshop within Waitomo's Ruakuri Cave. The photographers were selected by public vote in a competition run on the WeChat platform. More than 50,000 votes were received! Ruakuri Cave is the most accessible of the caves, allowing closer proximity to safely photograph glowworms using long exposure rather than flash, so as to not disturb.

Additional initiatives include Black Water Rafting guides learning relevant command words, often used in the tour, in Chinese, such as "jump" and "turn the headlights on". As the Chinese FIT (Free Independent Traveller) segment grows, adventure activities such as Black Water Rafting are increasing in popularity.

Discover Waitomo GM, Travis Donoghue says, "We have a dedicated team across sales, marketing and operations to cater for the Chinese customer and, as a customer-centric business, have some exciting product developments in preparation for 2019 and China - New Zealand Year of Tourism".

Waitomo Glowworm Caves was the first NZ tourism business to offer both Alipay and WeChat payments - the preferred method of payment for Chinese visitors. Discover Waitomo is now one of Alipay’s key partners in New Zealand.

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