Tourists still love travel brochures
Despite being digital natives, German visitors Ina Marzahn, 18, and Florin Frank, 19, are still big fans of tourist brochures and they are not alone.
VisitorPoint, New Zealand’s only national distributor of travel and tourism information, last year dispatched close to 11 million brochures, including a record 1.3 million in January alone.
The company’s business development manager, Jenni Powell, said almost 40 per cent of visitors still used brochures as their main source of information for bookings, and the young Germans were no exception.
‘‘Print is not dead in New Zealand, that’s for sure.’’
Marzahn liked having brochures to stick in her travel diary.
‘‘We like to have it as a memory and to show family and friends. We can look it up and say, ‘That was very beautiful.’’’
Frank said brochures were easier to slip into a pocket than a big travel guide, were good for local tips, and meant he didn’t end up ‘‘walking around like a digital zombie’’ staring at a screen.
The only downside was the amount of waste paper they accumulated.
Powell said VisitorPoint had more than 2000 display stands nationally in places like hotels, motels and airports, and also supplied a further 2000 information centres and trade outlets.
‘‘A lot of tourists potentially don’t have access to the internet so they’re looking for information they can just pick up.’’
Tourism operators still put a high priority on brochures, Powell said, because they attracted direct custom and helped to avoid the paying of commissions to agents.
She said brochures were printed in up to 10 different languages, with a lot more Chinese content appearing over the past two years, and an increase in Japanese translations, too.
The extra number published also reflected tourism growth in the regions, with a 30 per cent jump in demand from Northland, Marlborough and Dunedin.