Update from Tourism Tonga ^Featured

In the meantime the Sea Princess arrives this Wednesday (22nd) in Nuku'alofa after 4 days at sea from Sydney, so these people will be keen to get off, stretch their legs and spend some money.  Hopefully you will all take the chance to be thoroughly prepared for the 1942 passengers (mainly Australian) and 840 crew.  The ship arrives at 7.30am and leaves at 5.30pm.  Tourism Tonga is organising the usual welcome with the cultural group and Jones Travel has organised the Police Band to be there.

Last week we had a successful visit from Claudia Reis-Bahiri from Air New Zealand Holidays in Auckland.   Over 30 operators attended the meetings with Claudia and it looks likely that Air New Zealand Holidays will add seven more Tongan operators to their contracted portfolio.  We still need to send details to some of the Ha'apai and Vava'u operators as we are hoping that more of them will also be added.  Fay hopes to get that out to you by the end of this week.  It was great to see the networking going on between operators at these meetings - accommodation providers swapping information with activity providers and vice versa - we need to see more of this to ensure that visitors get the most of their visits here, and you maximise your opportunities from tourism in Tonga.

Fay took Claudia on a tour of a number of Tongatapu accommodation providers and all reported that they have very strong bookings through until the end of the whale watch season, or even beyond.   It's great to see such a positive vibe out there - operators need to ensure that they now invest back into their businesses in repairs and maintenance, and developing new capacity, so that the long-term growth of their operation continues.

We also had Shaun Lines, the CEO of Grow Ltd here for most of the week and I know Shaun met and worked with a number of operators helping them with marketing and website advice. Shaun was primarily here to work with Fay and the team on the marketing strategy and to ‘bounce around’ a number of good ideas to raise the awareness of Tonga in our key market places.

Well done to the TCC for organising the Telecommunications conference this week. 200 delegates from throughout the Pacific are here for three to five days – many making the most of the opportunity to enjoy Tonga’s hospitality (as well as hard work of course).

We have a five-week television campaign on TVNZ which started yesterday, mainly on peak hour spots and Tourism Tonga and our agency Grow Ltd have secured a really strong schedule.  Our television commercial will also play on Video-On-Demand in New Zealand on both TVNZ and TV3 over this same period.

The idea here is to boost awareness for Tonga as a beautiful South Pacific tourist destination, and combined with all the activity we have with the wholesalers and travel retailers, plus our on-line activity, people will be encouraged to book.

We have also had two articles in the NZ Herald over the last two weeks - one about Vava'u (whale watching and Mounu Island) and one about Tongatapu.  We also have an active visiting journalist programme and currently we have journalists in Tonga from Kia Ora magazine (AirNZ inflight mag) and Good Health Choices, and visits from other high profile magazines and newspapers over the coming weeks. Click on this to read the herald articles…http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=11431840 and http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=11428418

 Campaigns with House of Travel, United Travel, World Travellers and Go Travel are also underway and producing good results. Here is one of the campaigns…click on this link

http://unitedtravel.co.nz/holidaydestination/35/tonga

 The Tourism Tonga team have had a number of meetings with Real Tonga and it's encouraging to see the efforts RT are making to overcome some of the issues they are having with capacity.   They will shortly take delivery of another Jetstream J32 from New Zealand, and they have been running a Monday and Friday flight to Vava'u on a chartered ATR72  from Fiji Airways - a Wednesday flight on the ATR will be added as the season ramps up. The two extra ATR flights have added an extra 120 seats a week into Vava’u.  These are all certified aircraft, and approved to fly under NZ CAA regulations.  RT’s aim is to have 100 seats a day to Vava'u, whilst also supporting the key Ha'apai and 'Eua routes.

This is my last week here in Tonga and I will send a final Au Revoir to you all at the end of the week.

Have a great and prosperous week.

Stuart Perry
General Manager
Tourism Tonga
(Tonga Tourism Authority)
00676 781 9830
www.tongaholiday.com