Holiday parks look forward to Tourism 2025 boost

Holiday parks look forward to Tourism 2025 boost

All of New Zealand’s holiday parks are being encouraged to support the tourism industry’s new growth framework, Tourism 2025 – Growing Value Together/Whakatipu Uara Ngatahi.

Released today, Tourism 2025 sets a strong direction for the next decade, which the 300 members of the Holiday Accommodation Parks Association of New Zealand (HAPNZ) will be able to use for their individual business planning, Chief Executive Fergus Brown says.

“It’s an extremely competitive world and we need to work together to achieve our long-term goals,” Mr Brown says.

The holiday park sector already has several projects underway which are aligned with Tourism 2025 and will help bring the framework to life.

It has led the way in developing a Chinese language website www.tansuoxinxilan.co.nz/hapnz/index.htm and producing a video to encourage Chinese visitors to use holiday parks (the English language version can be viewed on Youtube at http://youtu.be/myQsZOJhCvA and the Mandarin version at http://youtu.be/_5OvVUlUgms).

“China is New Zealand’s fastest growing visitor market and we wanted to reach out to potential travellers in their own language. This helps improve their experience of New Zealand, and also encourages them to spend more time and money in the regions,” Mr Brown says.

Tourism 2025 highlights the importance of having good insight to back up business decisions, an approach which is fully endorsed by HAPNZ.

At the start of 2013, the Association introduced a monthly business confidence monitor which surveys its members on how their business is trending.

“Now the survey has been running for a year, we are starting to see comparative figures with the same period 12 months ago. Information like this is really useful to help holiday park owners to plan ahead and benchmark their businesses against others in the sector,” Mr Brown says.

“We have also started a project related to the productivity issues identified in the framework. We have initiated a research project asking our high season domestic visitors what would encourage them to return and stay outside peak season. Results will be out very soon.”

HAPNZ looks forward to working with other tourism players to boost the competitiveness of the tourism industry and achieve our aspirational goal to contribute $41 billion a year to New Zealand’s economy by 2025, Mr Brown says.

Key facts:
• The holiday park sector provides 38% of New Zealand’s commercial accommodation capacity and 20% of actual guest nights
• In the past year holiday parks provided 6,325,431 guest nights
• Guest nights to holiday parks are made up of approximately 32% international visitors and 68% domestic visitors
• While staying at holiday parks guests contribute $733 million in direct expenditure to the local communities
• Approximately $372 million (51%) of the expenditure is contributed by domestic travellers, with the balance of $362 million (49%) by international travellers

www.holidayparks.co.nz

ENDS

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