As New Zealand emerged from stringent travel restrictions imposed by the government's COVID-19 health response, and borders remained closed, The Coromandel's regional marketing organisation launched a domestic marketing campaign to help maintain visitor numbers and spend over winter.
For the months of June, July and August, the campaign attracted a record number of 425,200 digital visitors to the campaign website, generating 12,400 referrals to operators' booking sites.
This supported an increase of 13 per cent in visitor spend in the region compared with the same period last year.
The campaign was designed to showcase The Coromandel as the ideal destination for people in the target markets of Auckland, Waikato and Bay of Plenty to get away and recharge the soul after lockdown constraints.
The key components of the campaign were wellness, healthful activities, local cuisine, and retail shopping. All things that visitors may not expect to find in a destination that is traditionally popular in summer.
"Engagement from industry partners worried about the effect on their businesses was high and the 36 packages and deals they provided for the campaign were key to our success," says marketing manager for Destination Coromandel Megan Nunn.
"Some businesses received more than 1400 visitor referrals, so we can see the direct impact of the marketing. Our activity is mostly digital, because it is powerful and cost-effective. This way we were able to get our winter message in front of potential visitors nearly six million times."
This is not the first winter campaign that Destination Coromandel has executed, but the particular challenges of the COVID-19 environment meant that a strong performance was vital.
"Building on previous years' experience, we were able to achieve more than three times the amount of engagement on campaign website pages as last year. Total website traffic was also up 20 per cent on the same time last year. We are particularly satisfied with this result considering most travel destination websites experienced a sharp decline in traffic since March," says Megan.
As the winter campaign wrapped up, Destination Coromandel launched the first-ever regional summer marketing campaign to reignite past summer activity. By ensuring visitors return in droves to the region 'Where Kiwis Holiday', the organisation will help maintain spend and the ongoing viability of the visitor economy over the coming months.
