Feeding the machine
Sam Allen, Global Manager of Industry & Product Marketing at Tourism New Zealand
Tourism businesses need to consider “machines and humans” in their marketing plans, with New Zealand at risk of slipping down the search rankings, thanks to AI trends, says a senior Tourism New Zealand marketing manager.
Dan Hutchinson
Sam Allen, Global Manager of Industry & Product Marketing at Tourism New Zealand, told attendees at the Taupō Tourism Summit that 62% of those considering overseas travel now use AI as part of their holiday research.
"Once it gets above that 50%, it's pretty mainstream — it's not a niche anymore.”
Organic web traffic to newzealand.com has dropped 30%, while high-intent search queries — such as someone asking what a family holiday in Taupō looks like — are falling by 60% to 98%.
"If you're not turning up in AI results, you can get lost," he says.
The trend is most pronounced in two of New Zealand's key growth markets. In China, 82% of travellers use AI for travel discovery, while in India the figure sits at 78%.
Sam says AI isn't replacing traditional booking channels but complementing it.
Travellers will still turn to travel agents and online booking platforms to complete their reservations.
ChatGPT emerged as the most commonly used AI tool among travellers in Tourism New Zealand's research, with Google's built-in AI results also playing a growing role.
Sam says New Zealand is currently under-indexing in AI search results, and Tourism New Zealand is responding with new funding to update the Tourism Business Database and newzealand.com to improve AI discoverability.
For individual operators, Sam outlines three priorities: ensuring business information is easy for machines to read quickly, maintain consistency across all platforms so AI can verify details, and clearly classify the type of traveller the experience is suited for.
"You've got to think for machines and human. If any of those three things fail, you won't make the shortlist."
He says if operators in a region like Taupō all improve their AI visibility, the region as a whole will rank better when travellers search for Central North Island experiences.
Tourism New Zealand has released an AI toolkit — labelled version 1.0 — available as a free download on its corporate website.