Grant Webster: Tourism Holdings Chief Executive on the government investing 13.5 million dollars into Tourism New Zealand

Thumbs up for the Government's tourism campaign. 

It's putting 13.5 million dollars into Tourism New Zealand, targeting markets like China, Australia, the US, India, Germany and South Korea.  

Arrivals in February were down this year overall. 

Tourism Holdings Chief Executive Grant Webster told Ryan Bridge it's the right time to invest.  

Webster says Kiwis often think people just come here, but New Zealand's less than 1-percent of the world's tourism meaning we have to compete. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The government's coughing up thirteen and a half million dollars
for a new global marketing campaign to attract tourists to
New Zealand this comes. That's the number of international visitors
dropped two percent in February compared with last year, though
that was largely to do with the timing of the
Chinese New Year. We're still only at eighty five percent
of pre COVID overall. Chief Executive Tourism Holdings Grant Websters

(00:21):
with me, Hi Grant.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Good morning, welcome back to the morning.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Thank you good to be here. So is now a
good time to be spending coin on advertising for international
tourism direcum.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yes, I do. Obviously I'm somewhat biased, but it's a
very competitive market out there, and often in New Zealand
we think people just come, you know, because we're a
great country, which we are, but we're well less than
one percent of world tourism, so you know, we have
to compete.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Did you see your boost from the campaign that they
launched in Australia? You know that everyone must Go campaign
that everyone made fun of. Did it work as you
have you seen any evidence of it work?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Look, there has been some commentary in the market that
some people have. It's a very difficult time year on
year comparisons because East is obviously so late relative to
last year. There's no major events in winter, so it's
quite hard to get a direct comparison out of Australia
for US at that time. It's not a big market
for US. We turn domestic at that time, so not noticeable.

(01:23):
But there has been some positive commentary in the industry.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
How is domestic going?

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Oh, look, it's okay, it's okay. It's not something to
write home about, but we're not in the doldrums about it.
It's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
What markets do you reckon? We should be targeting because
they're talking China, they're talking Australia in the US, India, Germany,
South Korea. India less so, but as an emerging market
in South Korea, I.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Think that feels really good. Actually, the tourist in New
Zealand's get the information on forward bookings, they get the
information on who's got the most active considerers for New Zealand,
targeting where the fish are, so I think that's the
right thing to do. They feel like the right markets.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
How worried are you? Grant about the slowdown, you know,
the global general global slowdown that will inevitably come from
these tariffs.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah. Look, I think that the volatility and uncertainty is
I know those have come. Where's everybody's using But no,
look that is it is concerning on a global basis.
You know, people put their hands in their pockets very quickly.
We know that. We certainly see and we've talked about
this that Europeans going into the US because we're obviously
got business up there that's really dropped off. Will that

(02:39):
balance out with domestic in the US. I don't know. So, yeah,
we watch and wait and see. Definitely. In the past
we've seen things recover quite quickly when there's been a
bit of a pause. But we'll see. You have to
see what happens this time.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
All right, Grant, Hey, take care, best of luck, Thanks
for coming on the program. As always, Grant, we chief
executive Terrorism Holdings.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
For more Familiarly edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live to
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