Research Question: What are the main communication channels i-Site may use to reach the China target market?
Introduction
New Zealand’s tourism industry is our second largest export sector, following the dairy industry. The industry was worth $23.9 billion in 2013 and directly supported 110,800 jobs, making the continuation of its growth vital to the New Zealand economy. Despite growth in visitor arrivals continuing at a steady rate, there has been a decline in total visitor expenditure in real dollars since 2004 . I-Site visitor centres play a role in promoting visitor spending and therefore become essential in the regeneration of visitor expenditure. They are designed to add value to regional economies, encouraging visitors to see and do more during their stay . This is a Student Sample
The i-Site network was established in 1990 by Tourism New Zealand and has since then grown. Currently, there are over 80 i-Site visitor centres around New Zealand which provide both domestic and international tourists with relevant information and booking services for activities, transport and accommodation. I-Site services have proven to be both useful to and influential in the decisions of international visitors, with two thirds of those who used an i-Site saying it had an influence on the accommodation, activity or transport provider they selected and almost half of the users making a booking through an i-Site .
I-site’s strategic plan outlines several proposed outcomes, including brand marketing to grow their profile. Our group decided to focus on how well i-Site meets this outcome and uses its communication channels to promote its services to specific target markets. We chose China as our specific target market due to the country being one of New Zealand’s main visitor markets, second only to Australia , making it an ideal target market to focus on. The market is also experiencing rapid growth which is expected to continue, with arrivals from China having increased by 31% from 2012 to 2013 .
Our aim is to explore the current communication channels I-site uses in NZ, how effective these channels are and whether or not these communication channels would be applicable in China. The nature of the Chinese market poses challenges and opportunities for some of i-Site’s current communication channels, with the internet being heavily regulated in China and translation being the two languages being necessary in most cases. This is a Student Sample
Segmenting the Chinese Market
China has an estimated 26.4 million people actively considering travel to New Zealand . An active considerer is defined in the Market Snapshot Infographics as a person who considers New Zealand as one of the countries in their top five when choosing the next destination to visit . With China’s population being so large, it is important that i-Site focuses its resources on communicating with those most likely to visit New Zealand and have a need for their services.
The Chinese market can be broken into two main market segments, visitors that identify as FITs (free independent travelers) and visitors that travel in tour groups. The Chinese government has set up an arrangement, Approved Destination Status (abbreviated to ADS), with New Zealand, which allows Chinese holiday travelers to visit the country as part of a tour group (Tourism New Zealand, 2016). This agreement has implications in terms of the number of Chinese visitors who use an i-Site, with 46% of all Chinese visitors travelling through an ADS arrangement (100% Pure New Zealand, 2016). These Chinese visitors are unlikely to need i-Site services as the majority of their itinerary will be planned and organised by the tour operated company they are traveling with in advance. It would be more beneficial for i-Site to focus on targeting their communication channels to raise awareness of their brand amongst FITs, who are likely to require i-Site’s services. To do this, they need to make sure their choice of communication channels are suitable for reaching Chinese in FIT market segment, which is primarily composed of self-driving independent professionals in the 25 to 54 age bracket and active boomers who are in the 54 to 74 age range .
Tourism New Zealand has a similar focus. Their goal is to increase the number of FITs in order to shift from the market from “low value to high value” (100% Pure New Zealand, 2016). Current market trends suggest this is already happening, with Chinese becoming more confident organising their own trips and wanting to seek unique experiences, leading to an increase of free independent travelers (Tourism New Zealand, 2017). This will not only lead to an increased number of Chinese visitors requiring i-Site services but will also have benefits for the New Zealand tourism industry, with FITs being likely to stay longer and have a higher expenditure than other market segments.
Secondary Research – Analysis of Communication Channels
Currently, over 40% of visitors to New Zealand use an i-Site during their stay . I-Site’s goals from its strategic plan are to make the network more viable by helping both more international and domestic customers, distributing more product for the industry and reducing or containing the investment from the local government needed for the network to function . Our aim is by using secondary research to analyse the Chinese target market and the communication channels i-Site uses, we will be able to make feasible recommendations on how i-Site could improve its communication channels to strengthen their relationship with prospective Chinese visitors. Effective communication channels should lead to increased visitor awareness of i-Site and therefore more international visitors using the service, allowing i-Site to reach their strategic plan goal.
I-Site Visitors Centre
New Zealand’s Chinese tourism market is currently experiencing phenomenal growth, with the total value of Chinese visitors nearing $2 billion (Tourism New Zealand, n.d.). As a result of this growth, it becomes imperative to provide services and resources that accommodate for Chinese visitors that may speak little to no English. I-Site visitor centres have improved their information resources so they can better cater for the needs of these visitors. This includes the employment of Mandarin speaking staff at some of the main i-Sites to assist with the enquiries of Chinese visitors who feel more comfortable using their own language as well as increasing the number of pamphlets available in Chinese.
However, it is important that Chinese visitors are aware of these services and that the use of an i-Site visitor centre is available to them if they need to enquire about activities, accommodation and transport during their travels. The strategic location placement of i-Site centres in the arrivals area of the both Auckland and Christchurch international airports, the main gateways for international visitors in the North and South Island, makes them visible to tourists when they arrive in New Zealand. This allows tourists to get acquainted with what other i-Site centres may look like, hence making it easier to identify and recognise an i-Site if they needed to locate one during their visit.
There are growth opportunities for i-Site within the industry by looking at ways they can communicate the services they offer to Chinese visitors while they are in New Zealand as well as before they land. For example, i-Site could take advantage of communicating to Chinese visitors before they land in New Zealand by having brochures about i-Site available in Mandarin on airlines that fly direct from China to New Zealand such as Air New Zealand and China Southern Airlines.
As well as airports, Auckland could be a good place to look at setting up communication channels with the largest number of international tourists starting and finishing their trips in Auckland . Partnering with rental car agencies and providing them with i-Site brochures in Mandarin to put in their rental car information packs would allow i-Site to target Free Independent Travelers (FITs) who are known to prefer to rent a car and drive themselves when traveling. However, there may be barriers to partnering with some rental companies, such as Go Rentals, as they offer their own booking services and therefore are unlikely to let their competitors promote their services through their company. This is a Student Sample
Visual Representation
Providing visual direction and aids can be extremely helpful when trying to communicate to Chinese visitors with limited English. Using icons and visual signs is recommended to enable intuitive understanding . I-Site has recognised the need to use universally understood symbols, incorporating this into their logo. The lower case ‘i’ they use in their logo is the internationally recognised symbol for information . This will allow Chinese tourists to recognise the purpose of i-Site when they see signs with the logo outside visitor centres.
Website
Communication plays a huge role in the brand awareness for i-Site. While China is the second biggest market after Australia (see Appendix A) when it comes to tourism in New Zealand, it is most likely the hardest in terms of communication based on language barriers, web databases, and personal interests. Despite the differences, Tourism New Zealand has made a way for Chinese visitors to check out all there is to offer in terms of planning a holiday in New Zealand via their website, 100% Pure New Zealand, which promotes the tourism company, i-Site.
Tourism New Zealand has taken additional actions to overcome communication channel barriers we have with the Chinese target market by providing a website that has multiple language options. Users have the option of choosing to view the 100% Pure New Zealand website in Chinese Mandarin. Once the language is selected, a whole new format of the page appears and all the information and activity ideas appear in the selected language. The homepage provides information about the i-Sites in New Zealand, including a list of every i-Site location along with contact information and a direct link to the websites on each of the individual visitor centres (see examples in Appendix B). It also includes a map of New Zealand which will help with visual interpretation of the location of each individual i-Site in the North and South Island. By having Chinese language translation options on the 100% Pure New Zealand website as well as a complete translation of the i-Site map and visitor information brochure, Chinese visitors can access information about our i-Sites before they arrive and while they travel New Zealand in their own language, removing any language barriers.
Promoting the i-Site service via the 100% Pure New Zealand website is beneficial to increasing brand awareness as the site is likely to experience high website traffic, being the official website for New Zealand tourism. This can increase the publicity i-Site gets as well as providing a central page for tourists to see where all the individual i-Sites are located. The website is a good way for Chinese visitors to quickly source information on i-Site and is highly accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The language barrier Chinese tourists may experience with other websites is removed, making the content easy to understand and improving their experience of the communication channel. It would be helpful if Tourism New Zealand provided website metrics so we could better estimate how effective this communication channel currently is by looking at the number of Chinese users that visit the page as well as looking at where the page could be improved by analysing page load speed against the results of other websites.
Partnerships with other websites
Partnerships with other websites can also be a valuable communication channel for i-Site, with research showing internet becoming an increasingly popular channel of choice for research and bookings . The Auckland International Airport provides information about the i-Site that is located on the airport premises. The Christchurch airport also promotes the use of i-Site on its website, referring to them as “your one stop shop for all transport, tourism and activity bookings” . These relationships could lead to effective advertising for i-Site due to the number of international visitors who utilise these websites and therefore might discover information about i-Site from them. Other independent, non-government related websites such as itravlenz.com, backpackerguide.nz and kiwihospitality.co.nz refer to i-Sites as New Zealand’s visitor information centres and supply additional details such as the location of i-Sites. These partnerships can play a role in increasing the web traffic to official i-Site websites as well as increasing awareness of the i-Site network. Further research into factors such as web traffic generated to i-Site from direct links on other websites would be helpful to distinguish how valuable this communication channel is to i-Site and whether it would be worth pursuing partnerships with additional websites.
Social Media
Social media has become an increasingly important communication channel for businesses due to technological changes, with the internet becoming a preferential channel for research and bookings. Businesses who don’t use social media can be unaware of what consumers are saying about their company online. This leads to risks such as not being able remedy a complaint which can be seen by a large number of viewers when posted on a public platform.
The interactive nature of this communication channel can benefit companies by allowing them to gain a better understanding of the perception their target market has of their business. As well as this, it can also allow businesses to understand their target market and different segments of it in general. Tourism New Zealand uses Facebook data to compile the traits, behavior and characteristics of users who have visited New Zealand so they can better identify potential visitors and target Facebook marketing at them . Social media can also be a highly effective communication channel as it enables word-of-mouth marketing to take place. Consumers are more likely to trust information that come from a person they either know or respect rather than a traditional promotion campaign, with 92% of consumers believing recommendations from family and friends over all other forms of advertising . This holds true for those considering international travel, with around 83% saying they would trust a travel recommendation that was received via a social media source . Word-of-mouth strategies have their appeal as they can overcome consumer resistance to traditional promotion methods with notably lower costs and faster delivery than other marketing strategies .
Each social media platform has different strengths in terms of how they allow businesses to connect and interact with their target market and Tourism New Zealand recognises that social media plays a role in different stages of the travel planning life cycle. The travel planning life cycle includes dreaming, researching, booking and experiencing , with the Tourism New Zealand’s social media being designed to be useful and influential to potential visitors in each stage of the lifecycle. Tourism New Zealand’s Instagram page is a key part of their communication to potential visitors in the dreaming stage whereas Facebook, Twitter and Weibo are more helpful for those in the research stage. Tourism New Zealand promotes its 100% Pure New Zealand campaign on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and China’s Sina Weibo.
Social media is a highly feasible communication channel option, being able to reach a wide audience without huge marketing efforts and costs. Tourism New Zealand has successfully utilised this communication channel through different strategies on different social media platforms to create a large following. Instagram, for example, allows for visitor advocacy to occur, with visitors posting about their own New Zealand experiences and inspiring others planning to travel. The #nzmustdo campaign which started in 2014 on the Pure New Zealand Instagram page generated over 35,000 posts within a year, with only 150 of these being posts by the Pure New Zealand page . This demonstrates how social media can effectively be used to allow users to promote New Zealand travel New Zealand to their peers with little to no input from Tourism New Zealand. This kind of word of mouth strategy can be very beneficial as it can reach a large target audience and also can have more credibility since the recommendations are coming from peers and not the company itself. Peer experiences and recommendations have a clear influence on travelers, with over 50% saying ‘seeing a friend’s travel photo on social media inspires them to see the same destination’ .
While Tourism New Zealand has a strong social media presence in New Zealand, the importance of exploring Chinese social media must also be recognised. It would be a lost opportunity to forego social media’s potential to reach a large audience, with China having the world’s most active environment for social media . The use of social media and the ability it gives for word-of-mouth marketing to occur is also particularly important in the Chinese market. Word-of-mouth marketing can be very influential to Chinese consumers, due to many Chinese being skeptical of formal institutions and disproportionately trusting the advice they receive from opinion leaders on social media .
Despite the obvious benefits of exploring Chinese social media platforms, there are many challenges for Tourism New Zealand in terms of transferring its New Zealand social media approach to China. Internet use in China is heavily regulated due to government efforts to both control and censor what is available on the internet. Many of the social media sites we commonly use in New Zealand are banned in China such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat. Therefore, the social media communication channels i-Site currently uses in New Zealand would ineffective if applied to the Chinese target market. Realising this, Tourism New Zealand has run several social media campaigns that focus solely on addressing the Chinese target market. The first of their campaigns was run with Qyer, the Chinese leader in selling travel online. They chose to launch their second campaign on Sina Weibo, a Chinese social media site which is a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook and had over 300 million registered users at the time . The choice of Weibo reflected the particular target market segment Tourism New Zealand wanted to reach, with the site being actively used by FITs. The campaign offered users the opportunity to go in the draw for free South Island experiences by retweeting the post. It was successful in spreading the word amongst Weibo users, with 1108 retweets and 186 comments . Since 2013, the number of users who follow Tourism New Zealand on Weibo has grown from over 170,000 to over 330,000. Tourism New Zealand has also expanded its Chinese social media activity, rolling out a similar strategy on interest based social media, Douban.
While i-Site comes under the Tourism New Zealand umbrella and is promoted on the 100% Pure New Zealand website, Tourism New Zealand campaigns are often more focused on attracting potential visitors to travel New Zealand rather than communicating the service i-Site provides. For that reason, it is important i-Sites have their own communication channels so their services can be promoted to potential visitors. From observation, I was able to distinguish that numerous i-Sites from different areas of New Zealand are present on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It was difficult to assess how successful i-Site’s social media use in New Zealand is as without secondary research, the number of followers and support the site received from the public could only be gauged through observation. The lack of secondary research surrounding i-Site’s social media use could be attributed to Tourism New Zealand not running a singular account on these platforms to represent all New Zealand i-Sites. The accounts I observed are likely to be managed by the particular i-Site they represented and therefore be less likely to have access to the resources that Tourism New Zealand has to undertake extensive research into the success of their social media interactions such as their 100% Pure New Zealand campaigns. The number of accounts from different regions also means that the data of all these i-Sites would need to be collated to give a more accurate picture of i-Site’s social media success on a whole.
Further expansion and research into this communication channel could be highly beneficial in raising awareness amongst Chinese travellers of the services i-Site provides, with i-Site creating its own accounts on Sina Weibo as well as getting Tourism New Zealand to specifically promote i-Site through their existing Chinese social media pages being recommended. Setting up Chinese social media will result in higher brand awareness of i-Site amongst Chinese before they arrive and while they are in New Zealand, effectively making them more likely to use the service.
What the Secondary Research Suggests
Having over 80 i-Site centres nationwide and being one of the frontal information services at New Zealand airports, i-Site does not lack presence around the country. I-Site shows a strong awareness of the language barrier that Chinese travelers may face when entering New Zealand, and they address this barrier using in a variety of ways. This includes the capability of being able to translate Tourism New Zealand’s website, along with many other websites related to i-Site into Mandarin and having stands containing printed information brochures in Chinese. These solutions allow for a better understanding of i-Site’s services. Social media used by i-Site is appropriate for marketing towards Westerners – predominantly through platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. However, these social media platforms seem to have little impact on the promotion of i-Site towards the Chinese market due to the limited reach of these channels in China. Efforts made to increase the reach of Tourism NZ in the Chinese market through alternative social media seemed to show some success but lacked follow up and further goals in relation to i-Site.
Limitations of Secondary Research
Using secondary research has several advantages. This includes it being inexpensive due to it having already been collected and all the resources we used online were free to the public. The data was also readily available and easily accessible, with the majority of our secondary research coming from online sources. By undertaking secondary research, it saves us from having to do extensive primary research, with lengthy data collection and analysis processes. This means we can save time and resources, focusing our primary research instead on areas where secondary research is lacking.
However, we found there were several limitations to the secondary research we did. This included that we had to sort through a lot of research material to find aspects that were relevant to our research question. We found this was the case when dealing with Tourism New Zealand research and data, where the objective of the researcher was to explore how effective their communication channels were at promoting New Zealand to tourists, rather than i-Site specifically. As a result, we only found small sections of their research which was relevant to i-Site directly. Although we did try to use the most recent data and statistics we could find, it is possible that some of the data we used was no longer as relevant or valid as it was when it was collected. This was particularly a problem when you consider social media and how quickly statistics relating to the number of users and followers can change. The data that was collected on social media was from the 2013 and 2015, meaning it might not be an accurate representation of social media currently. There were also gaps in the secondary research when it came to finding out how effective i-Site’s communication channel was, hence the need to redefine our research problem and undertake primary research.
Defining the Research Problem
Research objective: How effectively does i-Site communicate its services to Chinese Free Independent Travelers before they arrive in New Zealand?
According to MBA lectures (2011), the research objective arises from issues that are not yet resolved. We wanted to further explore how effective the current communication channels are in terms of raising the awareness amongst Chinese FITs of the service i-Site offers. It was difficult to gauge how aware Chinese currently are of the i-Site network as our secondary data did not provide us with conclusive evidence that i-Site’s communication channels were effective. We believe awareness of i-Site may be quite low amongst Chinese before they arrive in New Zealand due to the fact there is differences between the social media and internet databases Chinese and New Zealanders use. If our primary research findings prove this to be true, we will need to consider ways we can improve our communication channels so they market i-Site better in the future so the service can be utilised by the large numbers of Chinese who visit New Zealand.
Selection of Basic Research Method
The basic research method we have chosen is an online survey, as this will make our survey accessible to a large number of Chinese people. Our survey will be able to gain an understanding into how i-Site could improve their communication channels.
There are many advantages to using a survey including reliability, few expenses and convenient data collection. By doing an online survey, it will also cut down data collection and analysis processes as data will not have to be manually entered onto a computer system.
The survey will help us understand:
• The age group that i-Site should be targeting
• Whether it is males or females who book and plan the trip
• Current awareness level of the i-Site network
• The most common social media platforms used by Chinese
• Whether they prefer to receive information in a digital or print form
From the results, i-Site marketing managers will be able to make the correct decision making to resolve the issue (s).
An example of the survey can be found in Appendix C, with the final version to be translated into Chinese.
Selection of Sampling Method
Nonprobability sampling technique fits the nature of the survey based on the convenience or the researcher’s decision to include particular elements in the sample. Non probability sampling can be very useful in the means of exploratory research in order to find out if a problem exists in an inexpensive and timely manner (Laerd Dissertation, 2012). This technique will help identify where problems occur with i-Site’s communication channels.
Convenience sampling is a nonprobability sampling technique that will help us collect the appropriate data needed. The survey will be available to respondents online for those who are willing to complete the survey. This will be discussed in more depth in the data processing section. This is a Student Sample
Convenience sampling is inexpensive and has a quick response rate. Even though convenience sampling does have serious limitations, it still fits the nature of our primary research as a random selection of the Chinese population would not represent our target audience. We instead want to target those 26.4 million Chinese visitors who are already actively considering New Zealand as a travel destination as our targeted sample size. However, we understand that only a small percentage of our target audience may actually complete this survey. Through convenience sampling, we are able to gain insights on how to improve i-Site’s communication channels for Chinese tourists.
Ethical Considerations
When conducting our primary research on the brand awareness of the i-Site network to Chinese visitors and the effectiveness of its communication channels, it is imperative that we assess the ethical considerations. In order to obtain correct and useful research, communication is an obvious ethical consideration when conducting primary research. To collect accurate information and feedback from Chinese visitors, we must make sure that language barriers are not an issue. To prevent translation issues, we will hire a translator who can communicate both in English and in Chinese in order to deliver the questions and responses to both parties accurately. This will prevent inaccuracies between English and Chinese phrases.
Other ethical considerations could consist of acknowledgment of privacy and confidentiality when asking questions. Privacy can be of great importance to any person from any ethical background, so informing the participant that their feedback will be anonymous and part of a group analysis and/or for statistical purposes can allow for more voluntary participation.
Design of Data Processing
Choices of methods on data collection and description
Data for the primary research will be collected via an online survey. The survey will be found linked on i-Site’s home page, 100% Pure New Zealand as well as their social media accounts. Given that we only want to target Chinese tourists, the link will only pop up once the page has been translated to Mandarin or when they visit these websites with a Chinese domain. To get Chinese to participate in our survey, we will offer an incentive such as an all-expense paid for vacation to Queenstown. This motive will hopefully result in higher participation rates, therefore ensuring we have an appropriate amount of feedback to draw conclusions from.
Through the survey, we will be able to gather and measure information related to the current research problem. The researchers employed by i-Site will be fully trained to interpret the data and resolve the issue (s). The Office of Research Integrity (n.d.) states that data collection allows researchers to fully explore the topic which is essential when maintaining the integrity of the research.
Mechanisms to control the quality
Collecting inadequate data can have negative side effects including the inability to answer the research questions accurately, inefficient decision making process and lower customer satisfaction. To avoid collecting inadequate data, data needs to be quality assured and controlled (ORI, n.d.). United Nations Statistics (n.d.) states that quality assurance ensures the minimisation of data errors and prevents unacceptable practices. Quality assurance is implemented from the very beginning when formatting the surveys to evaluate the results. Therefore, the survey will be designed to help understand the Chinese tourists in more depth. Quality control provides routine consistent checks to ensure the data’s correctness, integrity and completeness. Implementing quality control is done by checking on the data acquisition and comparing the estimates between the evaluated data (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, n.d.)
Data Analysis
According to Malhotra (2014) the data preparation process is vital to reducing errors, however, if there are errors, then they will be able to be fixed. This process should be initiated from the very beginning when the first batch of questions are received.
Questionnaire Checking
This first stage of the process is checking the survey quality and completeness. Checking the quality level of the survey will result in accurate data and therefore, the correct decisions will be made. This process is continuous and starts when the first survey is completed. From this, we will be able to resolve any issues before more surveys are been completed. Errors in a survey can include:
• Questions missing
• Slow loading for an online survey
• Confusing layout
Editing
Editing is a process that examines the inconsistency, incompleteness, illegible and abstruse answers. By solving these issues, it allows the survey to be accurate and precise. Incompleteness may occur from poorly structured or open-ended questions. To deal with unsatisfactory results, we may be required to recollect the data (returning to the field), assign missing values or discard unsatisfactory respondents. Returning to the field may be difficult relating to i-Site’s survey as it will be hard to re-contact certain respondents, especially if they have not filled out their contact details. Assigning missing values will be applied if the amount of unsatisfactory results is small but if this is not the case, then researchers will have to discard unsatisfactory results. However, this will only be appropriate if the number of respondents have completed the survey is large.
Coding
Coding is a process completed by researchers that create codes with structured questions. Creating codes allows the data to be organised and easily readable in an excel spreadsheet. Structured questions are easy to code as they are predetermined compared to open-ended questions. Coding unstructured questions are more complex as the respondent’s answers are not predetermined. Category codes are developed by analysing data of a few respondents.
Transcribing
Transcribing is a process where the coded data is copied onto disks or directly into computers. However, this step is not essential for i-Site’s survey as it is completed online and the data is already entered directly into the computers.
Data Cleaning
Data cleaning refers to consistency checks and the treatment of missing responses. Even though this has already been done in the editing process, data cleaning is more extensive as they have been executed by a computer. Consistency checks is a process that identifies inconsistent data or have extreme values. Inconsistent data refers to respondents misinterpreting the questions. An example of this in i-Site’s survey could be they understand who i-Site is but do not understand what service i-Site provides. Extreme values do not always result from errors and need to be closely examined. These values may arise from respondents being unaware of what they are selecting or circling. To avoid this from happening, questions need to be easily understood and executed with care.
Variable Respecification and Recording
This process involves the transformation of data to create new variables or modify existing ones so they are consistent with the objectives of the study. Recoding can be referred to redefining a category. For example, merging the lowest category that has few respondents with the next lowest category is a popular choice when creating or modifying variables.
Expected Outcomes
From this survey, we will be expecting several outcomes relating to the response of Chinese tourists. These expected outcomes have come from secondary research findings and personal knowledge.
Gender
We estimate approximately half the participants will be male and the half will be female. However, if there is enough of a significant difference in the number of males to females that answer the survey, we would interested in this outcome as we believe the person who answers is likely to be the person who is booking/researching the trip. This result would mean gender specific targeting could be worthwhile.
Age
We expect our results will reflect the age profile percentages of Chinese holiday visitors found in Tourism New Zealand data (2016), with 4% in 18-24 age range, 56% between 25-54 and 32% between 55-74. Knowing the age bracket of our target audience will be helpful in choosing suitable communication channels that we know will be commonly used by people of that age group.
Occupation
We expect most occupants to be in the middle working class to upper class, as New Zealand is an expensive holiday destination. These results would give insights into how much visitors can afford to spend on booking activities through i-Site.
How well do you speak English?
We expect our findings to show there to be a mixture of different language levels amongst our respondents. There tends to be at least one member in a traveling party that can speak fluent English, but this might not always be the case. Acknowledging the level of English proficiency will be beneficial in order to understand how to communicate more clearly with Chinese visitors. Fluent English speakers may be targeted in similar ways to other English speaking tourists, whereas those who to speak little to no English will need to be offered more support, with translation services being necessary. Focus on visual representation may also need to be increased if the findings show a large percentage of basic to non-English speakers.
How did you hear about New Zealand tourism?
We expect there could be a variety of answers, with word of mouth and the 100% Pure New Zealand campaign being common responses. These answers could be useful to which communication channels we use and whether or not it would be worth partnering with Chinese travel agents if this was to be a common response. However, it is important we consider the bias answers this question may create as those answering the survey will already be aware of either the 100% Pure New Zealand website or their social media as this is where the survey will be posted.
Will this be your first time traveling to New Zealand?
We would expect the majority of Chinese to be visiting New Zealand for the first time as this would mirror Tourism New Zealand statistics (2016), with 91% of Chinese being first time visitors and the remaining 9% to be repeat visitors. It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between first time visitors and less awareness of the i-Site brand.
How long are you planning on staying in New Zealand for?
Are you traveling independently or in a tour group?
Is your trip fully booked, flexible or no itinerary?
These three questions give us insights into what type of traveler they are. If they are Free Independent Travelers (FITs), their trips should be longer in length than those in a tour group and their itineraries will be more flexible than those traveling through Approved Destination Status. Our interest is more focused on how we could target FITs as they are the higher value and more likely to require i-Site services. We would expect to have similar results to Tourism New Zealand data (2016) which found 39% of Chinese being FITs and the rest being group visitors. However, we think there may be a slight increase in the number of FITs since then if trend towards FITs is still continuing.
Do Chinese tourists recognise the i-Site logo?
We are hoping to have large number of respondents claim to recognise the i-Site logo, since the ‘i’ is the universal symbol for information. It is imperative that we know that most respondents understand this, since the i-Site relies on the ‘i’ for visual interpretation.
Have you heard of i-Site before?
Although we hope to also have a large number of respondents who have heard of i-Site, we are quite unsure of i-Sites current brand awareness in China so this may not be the case. The answers from this question will allow us to draw insights into how effective communication channels currently are.
The awareness of the service i-Site provides?
This has a similar objective to the question above in terms of looking at i-Site’s brand awareness and how effective communication channels currently are. We included a comments section if they answered yes to check they did understand the concept of i-Site and were not just clicking yes because they felt they should. This measure was put in to try prevent inaccurate data from occurring.
How did you heard of i-Site?
We are expecting that a large majority of the participants have not heard about i-Site until coming across the 100% Pure New Zealand website or social media. This will indicate that our assumptions are correct in terms of visitors coming across i-Site via other New Zealand tourism promotion as we believe i-Site struggles to promote its individual centres to visitors before they arrive. This question will give us important insights into which communication channels are the most effective and we should use more as well as what channels we need to improve.
What current forms of social media do you use?
We are expecting the respondents to answer with similar responses such as:
• WeChat
• Weibo
• Douban
We are currently using social media, Weibo and Douban, as a communication channel. We expect that Chinese visitors use these forms of social media However, if this assumption is incorrect, we will have to adjust our social media communication accordingly. In our current research, we feel as if communication via social media is a weaker channel given the complex technology situation in China. However, we recognise the opportunities in developing and improving our social media connection with China which is why we would like to further research which social media platforms our target audience uses the most so we can successfully reach them.
Do you prefer to view maps and other tourist information on printed material (i.e. brochures, maps) or do you prefer to use digital forms to get information (cell phones, apps)?
We expect to see a correlation between the age of the respondent and whether they prefer digital or print methods. We believe older men and women will prefer to use printed maps and brochures, while the younger age groups prefer digital maps and information. However, the easy access of physical copies might still be the most popular, due to Chinese tourist having limited data and with free wifi access being less prominent in parts of New Zealand. Moving towards a technological approach to tourism is beneficial, in order to keep up with the uprise of technology, however having physical copies of maps and brochures will still be needed. We will be interested to see which is the most popular response.
Would you be more likely to use an i-Site if you knew about it before you arrived in New Zealand?
We are expecting the answer of this to be yes as Chinese will see the free information and booking service as having the potential to be useful to them in during their New Zealand holidays. If this is true, it will prove our assumptions that we need to focus on increasing the brand awareness of the i-Site network to Chinese visitors before they arrive in New Zealand. This is a Student Sample
Plan to report findings
In our survey, we chose to include mainly structured questions as they would take less time to analyse and gain insights from than non-structured questions. We want to be able report our findings to i-Site in a timely manner so the data would still relevant and valid. We propose our data will help us gain insights into how effective i-Site currently communicates with the Chinese tourism market and where improvements to these channels can be made.
We would plan to present our findings in a detailed report. We also intend to present a summarized report, which will include our main findings. We plan to include several visual elements such as graphs so data can be easily and quickly interpreted. We want to provide a highly visual summarized report as well as a full report so those in managerial roles can draw conclusions from these to make future changes in a timely manner.