Airline site connects tourism players

Tourism Exchange chief executive Chris Hunter.

A new company backed by Air NZ has launched an online trading platform to connect local tourism businesses to wholesale travel distributors, bucking the cutbacks in the rest of its business.

The Tourism Exchange is 74 per cent owned by the airline and 26 per cent by Australian tourism technology company V3, in which Air NZ last year bought a 26 per cent stake.

Director and Air NZ deputy chief executive Norm Thompson said the idea had emerged from the 2015 tourism strategy.

He said the airline picked up on the idea at the end of 2007 and began searching for a technology partner. V3 had run its Australian site for three years and had 3700 businesses signed up to its open booking exchange.

The New Zealand site would allow local tourism businesses to register how many rooms or tickets they have on a real-time booking system which distributors could then tap into. Businesses do not pay to be on the site but will pay the exchange a 3.5 per cent commission once a sale is completed.

Tourism Exchange chief executive Chris Hunter said it had signed up two suppliers in a pilot so far. They were Mitchell Corporation - an accommodation group - and AOT Group, an Australasian supplier of attractions.

He hoped to sign up 900 suppliers in the first year and have 2500 within two years. Tourism Exchange was expected to be profitable within 18 months. Thompson would not say how much Air NZ had invested in setting up the business, citing commercial sensitivity.

While Air NZ's website is expected to be the first distributor to sign up, the company hopes to add inbound tour operators, other online sites and even other airlines.