The Weekend Sun
3
Cruising for data A Matua woman who utilised a high seas holiday cruise to gather Tauranga tourism data has uncovered what she believes to be a litany of lost marketing opportunities for the Bay of Plenty. Questioning cruiser Wendy Napier-Walker with the Tauranga brochure showing one Tauranga tour out of eight offered to passengers on the cruise boat. Photo by Tracy Hardy.
“I hate to say it,” says Wendy Napier-Walker. “But we have missed the boat.” The former diplomatic corp worker recently spent 13 days aboard the cruise liner Dawn Princess, relaxing and compiling a passenger’s perspective marketing analysis of how the Bay of Plenty is sold and received. Wendy concludes tours are too expensive, Tauranga did not register with passengers, the city is perceived as a gateway to Rotorua and passengers are more impressed with Napier. She also believes cruise ship passengers get dated, inaccurate and confusing information about the Bay of Plenty, Tauranga needs to be more welcoming – and the city needs a theme to sell. Wendy cruised Auckland, Napier, Wellington, Akaroa, Port Chalmers, Fiordland and Melbourne. As result, she believes she could make a reasonable comparative assessment of New Zealand ports of calls after questioning passengers, attending passenger briefings, absorbing passenger information and brochures – and, more importantly, experiencing the Tauranga stopover. For example, the port guides supplied to passengers on-board the liner are prepared in North America – the Tauranga map is out of date, images are blurry and obscure, there could be confusion about the locality of the shopping area at the Mount and population figures are nearly 10 years out of date. That is just symptomatic, says Wendy. There were nearly 2000 passengers on the cruise – most Australian with a smattering of Kiwis and Americans. Passengers Wendy mingled with complained tours at Mount Maunganui are too expensive. A top end tour like the Rotorua and Polynesian spa experience would cost an adult $299 and a child $229 and a Waimangu Valley and Rainbow Spring tour costs $239 and $169 respectively. “Many passengers preferred to do their own thing” says Wendy. For its part Tourism BOP says it will happily meet with Wendy. The organisation told The Weekend Sun it’s aware the information the cruise ships use needs improvement for all local ports of call; and its working with Tourism NZ to improve this. To read the full story, go to SunLive.co.nz and search ‘Deck quoits and data’. By Hunter Wells
COMPUTING
ENTERTAINMENT
WHITEGOODS
FURNITURE
+ MORE!!