Tourism industry campaign a hit on the web

As the tourism industry braces for a tough few months, a New Zealand marketing campaign on social networking sites has chalked up its 100,000th viewing on YouTube.

The video "raves" are collected from international visitors at a mobile recording studio, edited and posted on the networking sites by Tourism New Zealand (TNZ).

TNZ said more than 1300 videos had been uploaded by travellers from Australia, the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany, Canada and elsewhere since the studio began travelling around the country in December.

Some videos had been viewed more than 250 times and a total of more than 100,000 viewings had been recorded on YouTube.

The campaign was chosen by Britain's Sunday Times newspaper as one of "10 most ingenious travel offers" the travel industry has come up with to get bookings.

Despite the clever marketing, TNZ was expecting economic chills to accompany climatic ones as autumn and winter progressed.

This month, the agency said that while an anticipated steep drop-off in arrivals had yet to emerge across the whole industry, arrivals from long-haul markets were expected to be down between 5 and 10 per cent in the short-term.

But it forecast visitor numbers from Australia would range from being flat to having growth of 3 per cent in the three months to May.

As a result the overall international decline was expected to be held to about 5 per cent during the period.

- NZPA