Hawke's Bay's status as a tourist destination is increasing the number of visits from Here mapping vehicles, which are also collecting data for driverless-car technology.
Here started as United States company Navteq and was the largest maker of automotive-grade map data for car navigation equipment when acquired by Nokia in 2007. In 2015 it was sold to a consortium of German car manufacturers - Audi, BMW and Mercedes.
Here's Oceania head of product management, strategy and operations, Sunny Wijewardana, said it was the world's leading location data company.
Clients included Oracle, Amazon and Facebook and it provided platform services for smartphones.
He said eight out of 10 car navigation devices used Here information and "the exciting part of the company" was to enable "an autonomous future for everyone" through tools such as self-driving cars and drones.