Conference 2011

Watch this space for details of the 2011 Conference.

Conference 2010

The 2010 conference was held on the 24th to 27th June 2010 at the Brentwood Hotel in Wellington.

Writeup on Wellington conference held 24 to 27 June 2010: The following was written by Kai Tovgaard, @home NEW ZEALAND member, as a summary of the last conference, and Kai is happy to share this with all members. Kai's email address is at the end of this email if you wish to contact him regarding any points.

Dear fellow @home NEW ZEALAND members
I thought you might be interested in what went on at our annual Conference in Wellington on 2427 June 2010. What a fantastic conference it was, informative, great fellowship and extremely well planned. We must warmly congratulate the organisers.

Thursday 24/6

We had cocktails and nibbles at the Grand Hall of Parliament hosted by Allan Peachey, MP for Tamaki and had an opening address by The Hon Dr. Jonathan Coleman, Associate Minister for Tourism who praised us for all the good we as B&B hosts are doing for New Zealand's image as a very friendly and welcoming country.

Friday 25/6

We were officially welcomed by Forde Clarke and introduced to the organising committee. Fran Wilde opened our conference officially, and pointed out how important the tourism industry is to New Zealand. Fran told us how Wellington has turned things around and is now a top destination for tourists. She also told us how important word of mouth is to New Zealand's reputation.
We were also addressed by David Wilks, General Manager, Tourism Development, Tourism New Zealand and Kerry Marshall MBE, JP, Mayor of Nelson and chair of the iSITE Visitor Information Network Board. We were told that at the present time Tourism NZ is targeting advertising to USA, China, Germany and of course our no 1 market Australia. India has a big potential in the future to become a very important market. The 100% Pure New Zealand brand is still working very well. Digital marketing as we know is very important and will develop further. We were advised to work with local councils so that they don't forget about how important Tourism is to the regions.

Kerry Marshall informed us that 90% of visitors to iSITES make bookings somewhere after their visit. He was informed by some of our members that they were not very happy with the way the Rotorua iSITE was working, and it was recognised that not all iSITES are sited very well or in some cases are hard to find. QM will work with us trying to streamline their procedures.

We were then addressed by Matthew Mayne CEO for Jasons Travel Media. He reminded us of how important the Rugby World Cup is going to be for NZ not just at the time, but if we can leave visitors with a good impression, it is going to be very good for the future. Matthew also told us that that for potential guests to be able to book on line is essential, and told us that Siteminder as a Channel Manager is the very best. He went on to say that social media is going to become more and more important, and recommended that we should have social media taps on our websites, and if we don't know how "Get a Geek". Matthew's opinion was that Twitter is better than Facebook.

In the afternoon there were choices of two bus tours: The one we took went to the Weta Cave, Zealandia and TePapa. We would not have missed either of them for anything.

The day was rounded of nicely with a Happy Hour where we met the Duke and Duchess of Wellington.

Saturday 20/6

There were various workshops. I chose Marketing and Quality Assurance and Internet Marketing. What we learnt in no particular order: We all know how important cleanliness is, so let us keep it up, and try to give guests something they don't expect. In New Zealand in general we were told that if a customer is nice, we have no trouble being nice back, but if they are not nice, we don't handle it very well.

The @homeNZ website is extremely fortunate, thanks to Trevor Knight, to have the only B&B link to the Rugby World Cup 2011 website.

Get Google Analytics to see from where your enquiries are coming from, including referral sites. Go to www.google.com/analytics. Yvonne Lim told us that 60% of bookings are now made on line. It is through Google 90% of people find us. You can buy key words. Links are important. Social networking is important. Try to get on Trip Advisor. Set our websites up as a supermarket. Wide aisles = easy to read, Have end of aisles specials. Good photos are extremely important. At check out it is important to have Availability. Easy to make a booking. Secure payment for guests.

Simon told us that they have 465 customers on their Sales Channel. A sales manager can automatically change availability on all sites you are advertising on. To use a sales channel you should have 2 rooms or more, as otherwise double bookings can become a problem, and we pay.

Sarah Meikle told us that social networking is here to stay. In her words YOU CAN'T ESCAPE IT. No 1 is Facebook, very cost effective. She gave an example that a lady on Facebook whose profile (among other things) was single. She changed that to engaged and immediately got ads advertising wedding dresses, and when she changed the profile to married she was immediately contacted to see if she wanted to buy baby gear.(A bit scary!) We very told that Twitter is good for deals.

Kathryn reported on the Caring for Our Environment Workshop. Our presenters were: Tim Grubb from Tourism Resource Consultants who specialises in Tourism Sustainability, Marion Wood, MD of Commonsense Organics with a passion for Fair Trade, Mike Bourke, from EECA who has a background in the electricity market. These three fascinating people encouraged us to manage our businesses efficiently, use energy wisely and treasure our environment. Topics touched on covered: Light bulbs, solar water heating, heat pumps, driving efficiently, using trades people who embrace these values and how investments now, will have payback in the future. The session was informative, enjoyable and engendered many questions. We all appreciated the opportunity to hear speakers of such high calibre.

In the afternoon we were addressed by Paul Yeo CEO of the inbound Tour Operators council of NZ and the Travel agents Association of NZ, We were told that travel agents are not a dying breed, and that many travellers were looking to book everything in one hit. Air travel/transport/accommodation/sightseeing.

Then Tim Cossar CEO TIA who told us that Tourism is New Zealand's second biggest export earner. Getting John Key to be Minister for Tourism, was not just luck, a lot of work went into that. TIA's national focus is advocacy and policy, not marketing. Tim stressed that it is vital that we interact with local councils. The land and water forums taking place are hugely important. Tim went on to tell us what TIA thinks travellers are looking for/doing:
1 Value (People are trading down)
2 Late bookings are the new norm
3 They are looking for authenticity and personalised experiences
4 They need to be able to trust us
5 Sustainability
6 They want to reconnect with simple pleasures,
7 Web hugely important
8 Look at what other destinations are doing.

Then we had the @home NEW ZEALAND AGM. You will get Minutes from that soon from someone much more professional that me. Jacqui is her name.

Then we had our Gala dinner, and what an event that was. Excellent food, excellent raffle prizes, excellent auction items. Wonderful, wonderful fellowship AND we were entertained by Vicki and Karl singing and playing tunes we are all knew. They were absolutely fabulous. It was unfortunate they had to stop; otherwise we would still be dancing.

A great, great conference.
Thank you also to our sponsors: Book In, Vision Insurance, Sleepyhead NZ, Jason Travel Media, AA Travel, Tourism Exchange, The Bed and Breakfast Book.
Kai Tovgaard, @homeNZ Canterbury Secretary, info@anestbnb.co.nz

Conference Evaluation Results

View the evaluation Results.

Conference 2009

The 2009 conference was held at the Ashburton Hotel on the 12th/13th and 14th June and was organised by our Ashburton regional group with Karen Mcintyre holding the reins as coordinator, ably assisted by her husband Jim and a small but enthusiastic committee. The conference theme was "Putting people first" and the 100 approximately who attended seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. The first event was the Friday morning golf tournament sponsored by FMG Insurance and this was played in fine weather at the Ashburton Golf Club. During the afternoon attendees were able to register and the conference was formally opened by His Worship the Mayor of Ashburton, Bede O'Malley followed by a cocktail party. The Mayor spoke on the versatility of the Ashburton district and mentioned the many types of farming in the district, the impressive man-made Lake Hood and the close proximity of Mount Hutt Skifield for winter sports. Trevor Knight, president followed the Mayor by introducing the candidates for the board elections giving each of them an opportunity to address the members present.

After a sponsored Saturday morning breakfast the Annual General Meeting including the election of board members took place. The M.C. Dick Taylor, winner of the 10,000 metres at the Christchurch Commonwealth games in 1974 then introduced the main guest speaker, Christine Fernyhough, owner of Castle Hill Station who enthralled those present with her exploits as a high country farmer. After lunch Dick Taylor kept the attendees amused with his endless supply of yarns as he introduced a number of speakers who provided those present with a host of information useful in this fast-growing tourism sector. The speakers included David Rush from Vision Insurance, Peter Blackwell from AA Travel, Bob Draper who updated attendees with progress on the introduction of food safety regulations and Tim Cossar from Tourism Industry Association.

A fashion display of garments made from merino and merino/possum mix organised by the Tin Shed was a highlight of the afternoon and those present were then given the opportunity to have a run-through of the association's new website by webmaster Chris Lloyd. After a short break to freshen up the evening entertainment of a dine and dance was held with music provided by an old time dance band. During the evening festivities a fund raising auction was held with items donated by the Ashburton community up for grabs and Robert Forgie managed to auction nothing raising $65 for the local St. Johns ambulance service. Several awards were presented during the evening by AA Tourism, Jasons and @home NEW ZEALAND.

Sunday morning saw several speakers holding our attention and again these were ably introduced by M.C. Dick Taylor. Sheryl Stevens from Wastebusters was intriguing and she was followed by presentations from Sleepyhead, Jasons, Zeald, Kevin Donaldson, a fire safety officer and Bill Grant an ex limousine chauffeur. These speakers were followed by a light hearted introduction to the 2010 Wellington conference presented by the Wellington members who were present. Finally before the close of formalities by Dick Taylor there were further presentations and the drawing of several raffles and donated prizes followed by a closing lunch.

Those attending felt they had been well entertained and had also enjoyed the educational content of the conference. Attendees felt the organisers had done an excellent job and the association would like to thank the following main sponsors who helped make the conference so successful.

Vision Insurance, AA Travel, Sleepyhead Bedding, Jasons, The NZ Bed & Breakfast Book, FMG Insurance and all the minor local sponsors who contributed