Air New Zealand has welcomed the launch of the tourism industry’s new framework to significantly grow the contribution of tourism to New Zealand’s economy.
Tourism 2025 aims to align the New Zealand tourism industry and see industry stakeholders work together to capitalise on growth opportunities and increase tourism revenues to NZD$41 billion by 2025.
Air New Zealand Chief Executive Officer Christopher Luxon said Tourism 2025 goes hand in hand with Air New Zealand’s Go Beyond strategy which is also focussed on growth and supercharging New Zealand’s success.
“Under our Go Beyond strategy, we are working hard to achieve sustainable growth in the Pacific Rim. We recognise Air New Zealand’s success, that of the tourism industry and ultimately New Zealand’s success are inextricably linked,” Luxon said.
“To raise the contribution of the tourism industry to $41 billion annually, an increase of more than 70 percent, requires an industrywide commitment. Tourism 2025 will see industry players large and small working cohesively towards this goal.”
The Tourism 2025 framework has been built around five key themes including growing sustainable air connectivity, targeting for value, visitor experience, productivity and insights.
“The themes of Tourism 2025 align well with Air New Zealand. Our proposed alliance with Singapore Airlines is a great example of how we can build sustainable air connectivity to and from New Zealand and our priority markets of South East Asia,” said Luxon.
In addition to forming new alliances, the airline is tailoring capacity to match demand on existing routes including boosting capacity on its Japan services by 30 percent this year and its Auckland – San Francisco route by 10 percent over the Northern winter period.
Another focus under Tourism 2025 is improving the visitor experience to adapt to the changing visitor mix.
“Continually enhancing the customer experience and delivering what our customers truly value is a key priority for Air New Zealand,” Luxon said.
“A great example of this is on our Shanghai-Auckland route where our passengers are predominantly Chinese. We have bilingual flight attendants, provide a choice of Chinese or Western style food and offer Chinese inflight entertainment options and traditional comforts such as hot towels and slippers.”
Tourism is one of New Zealand’s largest export industries generating NZ$9.8 billion in export earnings (in the year ended March 2013). More than 2.76 million international visitors arrived in New Zealand in the year ended February 2014, around one third of which arrived on Air New Zealand services.
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