RWC business club aims to tap well-heeled sport tourists

Photo / Sarah Ivey

A match-making business club for Rugby World Cup tourists plans to help New Zealand companies make contact with the influx of well-heeled fans.

Leon Grice is director of the New Zealand 2011 Office, which is funded and run out of the Ministry of Economic Development and has developed the free-to-join online business club.

Overseas visitors can sign up online and provide details including where they are from, what team they support, the type of organisation they work in, relevant business sectors, whether they want to attend a business conference and the recreational activities they want to do in New Zealand.

"The aim is to utilise the event to make New Zealand business people and New Zealand more globally connected," Grice said.

"Making sure that New Zealand presents itself as a creative and innovative nation, a little bit more than lambs and grass and spring daffodils, is an absolute key."

Grice expected many visitors to be business people as many countries saw rugby as a sport for the elite.

"In Australia the nurseries for rugby are the private schools and the universities, in Japan it's the business houses and the universities, in the United States it's the ivy league universities that dominate rugby and in England it is the well-heeled that support rugby," he said.

"So to get 85,000 people of that kind in our country all wanting to have an amazing New Zealand experience is an opportunity that we want to make sure New Zealand businesses can be in among."

New Zealand businesses could sign up to host events and be matched with people with the same interests visiting their part of the country.

"By being a member of the club we'll be providing them with targeted information based on their interests and the regions that they're going to be in that'll include the hosting opportunities that will be offered out of that region," Grice said.

The website began in April.

"In about two to three months we'll be gearing up basically an online direct marketing strategy through the official travel agent network and through other relevant databases."