Entrants make “big deal” of Tourism Awards

1 February 2006

Entrants make “big deal” of Tourism Industry Awards

The Tourism Industry Association represents 2000 businesses and organisations within the tourism industry.

Members include airlines, airport companies, and regional tourism organisations, rental car, coach and taxi companies, inbound tour operators, accommodation providers, tourism attractions, researchers, training organisations and tourism services providers.

Tourism is New Zealand’s largest export earner – accounting for 18.5% of this country’s export earnings.

The Tourism Industry Association organises the New Zealand Tourism Conference, TRENZ and the New Zealand Tourism Awards.

Go to www.tianz.org.nz Winning a Tourism Industry Award in 2006 will be more of a big deal than ever, with tourism operators showing keen interest in entering the New Zealand tourism industry’s most prestigious awards.
Simplifying the entry process for the 2006 awards has resulted in a significant increase in interest from entrants, according to Tourism Industry Association chief executive Fiona Luhrs.

“We introduced a new phase to the entry process this year to encourage more operators to have a go. I’m delighted to see that has worked, with a large number of operators entering the Awards for the first time, as well as healthy numbers of returning entrants from previous years,” Fiona says.

The new Expression of Interest phase, which closed on Friday (27 January), was introduced following feedback from TIA members that the entry process was too hard and too time-consuming. It enabled operators to lodge a preliminary entry without having to invest large amounts of time and resources in preparing detailed business cases.

Judges will select a short-list after assessing each of the Expressions of Interest and those operators will be invited to proceed to the next stage of the entry process. Operators will know if they have been selected by mid-March, Fiona says.

“Once TIA has received their completed Stage 2 entries, they can start promoting themselves as Awards finalists,” she says. “This is also a change from previous years, when finalists were not announced until mid-June. This year finalists will have an extra three months to promote their finalist status.”

The Awards are managed by TIA with significant support from sponsors

Air New Zealand and Tourism New Zealand.

Key statistics about tourism:

- Tourism is the world's fastest growing industry
- New Zealand tourism arrivals have doubled in size since 1994
- Forecast annual growth is 4.7% on average for at least the next five years
- Tourism is New Zealand's single largest export sector and contributed $7.4 billion dollars to the economy in the year ended March 2004. That is 18.5% of exports
- Tourism directly and indirectly employs 10 percent of the work force. That is one in 10 jobs in New Zealand.
- Tourism represents 9.4% of gross domestic product and generates nearly $500 million in GST returns from international visitors each year. Tourism is the only export sector whose international clients pay GST.

ENDS

© Scoop Media