Stephen England- Hall: Computer geek selling NZ to the world
It hasn’t been a conventional corporate career for the new boss of Tourism New Zealand. While the industry is booming, he tells Grant Bradley, we have to keep fighting for our share of visitors
S elf- described computer geek Stephen EnglandHall says heading Touri sm New Zealand was never part of his original long- term plan. “If you’d asked me 10 years ago would I end up being the chief executive of a Crown- owned entity which markets New Zealand to the world, I would have gone ‘ you’re mad’,” he says.
With a degree of understatement, he says his was not a traditional corporate career. Aged 44, his lengthy and varied CV — mainly in digital marketing, data and technology — is one that any high- achieving millennial would aspire to.
“If I look at my children and the generation of millennials that we’re hiring these days, there is no desire for a 25- year career in the same organisation.
“Perhaps I was just a bit ahead of my time,” says England- Hall, speaking in the agency’s smart new offices in central Auckland.
Tourism NZ gets government funding of $ 117 million a year and given his experience as a digital pioneer, his fit with the organisation is logical.
Most of Tourism NZ’s spending is devoted to marketing and on digital campaigns which have sparked the interest of Google and Facebook, which run test campaigns in association with the tourism agency.
England- Hall was running Loyalty New Zealand, which operates Fly Buys, when he was headhunted.
He’d been at Loyalty NZ since the end of 2013, and in his last year there had seen a big shakeup of the loyalty card market, with Airpoints and Fly Buys parting company and more competition springing up.
In spite of the upheaval in that sector, he says he was “having a blast” and there was a growing loyalty market, all based on gathering and selling vast amounts of data about consumers.
But “when someone comes along and says do you want to market New Zealand to the world, you kind of go ‘ yes’. It wasn’t a difficult decision.”
He started in April and has been getting a good look at the organisation’s New Zealand operations, as well as starting to travel to some of its 13 overseas offices where most of the 170 staff are based.
Tourism NZ chairwoman Kerry Prendergast says appointing a chief executive to succeed Kevin Bowler is the board’s most important role.
She says England- Hall stood out from other candidates because of the breadth and depth of his digital experience.
England- Hall’s upbringing helped shape his interest in technology.
His mother was a teacher and father a Royal New Zealand Air Force padre, and the family moved from base to base around the country. He went to secondary school at Palmer- ston North Boys’ High School while his father was serving at Ohakea.
He’d already been developing an interest in the original home computers — Commodore 64s and ZX81s — learning how to program them to create animation and videos
“I played around as a kid because I was fascinated — we were surrounded by technical people, pilots and engineers,” he says.
“One of the things I did when I left school was writing software for one of my friend’s father’s insurance businesses, which was my first foray into tech and self- employment. I was a bit of a geek.”
He didn’t go to university after leaving school in 1991, instead going straight to Telecom as it was going through substantial changes.
“This was during the service creation days, figuring out how to build new technology and taking them to market for corporates and consumers. It was fun and quite exciting.”
It was there that he was truly bitten by the technology bug, and worked in New Zealand and overseas for tech companies EDS and BT Global.
While he was deep in the technology sector, his interest in the interface between machines and people was stimulated and he was accepted into Cambridge University to do an MBA. He did 18 papers in just over a year, he says.
“The big thing it teaches you is that you can’t solve every problem on your own — it’s about teamwork.
“I have this theory that social evolution occurs at the intersection between technology and humanity — I’ve always been interested in that.”
England- Hall was about to take a job at a big global bank when a digital marketing opportunity turned up at a fast- growing company called DNA.
The business was bought by interactive agency Razorfish and he went on to be its chief executive.
It grew from 40 people to 200 and he headed it during the global financial crisis — a “very formative period”. The company, which did work for Tourism New Zealand, also built Britain’s second biggest online store, O2, and “built the connective tissue” for an iPhone launch.
England- Hall then joined social media marketing company Syncapse, which later failed, in Toronto before returning to New Zealand with wife Suzie and two chil- dren.
“All of them are brilliant businesses and are fascinating to be a part of for different reasons. The common thread was building sustainable outcomes for people.”
England- Hall joined Tourism New Zealand as the industry here enjoys record growth from overseas visitors, supplanting dairy as the top overseas currency earner.
While growing global wealth, a greater propensity to travel and this country’s attractiveness as a safe and stable destination have encouraged airlines to pour in capacity, the Tourism NZ marketing message has been acknowledged as a winner.
More than 3.7 million people arrived here in the past 12 months and the aim is to increase frequency of visits from established markets and keep broadening into new ones.
“If we were heavily dependent on one or two key markets and didn’t have a portfolio strategy there i s clearly a big risk to the country,” says England- Hall.
While the country i s enjoying a tourism boom, there’s no guarantee that will continue.
“We have to fight really hard to exist. When you’re in New Zealand it’s beautiful, great culture and with welcoming people. When you get out of New Zealand and go to China or America, we are just one small voice amongst hundreds of others trying to get consumer dollars and discretionary spending.”
Consumers are making choices: “Do you go on a holiday to New Zealand or do you buy a new Tesla?”
England- Hall says tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors globally because people are looking for experiences in their lives which are beyond buying things.
“We see that increasingly in that millennial and post- millennial generation — they’re looking at the sharing economy, unique moments and shareability of content.”
That shift is going to show up in the type of tourism products that visitors want.
“New Zealand, like every other country in the tourism market, will need to rethink how those propositions look like in the future.”
A European traveller might want a kayak tour for hours or overnight, while a Chinese visitor might want a brief Instagram- worthy moment with beautiful scenery around them.
“We need to be able to modify the proposition to suit the market.”
One big part of Tourism NZ’s global push that isn’t likely to change in the near future is the 18- year- old 100% Pure campaign.
“There i s huge brand equity — many countries have tried but failed,” says England- Hall.
He says the campaign will continue to evolve. It wasn’t meant to be a literal description of the country’s environmental record, which he says could always be improved. A pure environment was an aspiration.
“When you think about it on a deep level, it’s about our culture, our food, who are we every day. It’s not a glacier or a lake because there’s glaciers and lakes all around the planet. It’s our culture that makes us 100 per cent pure.”
Tourism “by design” has to work for the visitor and for locals, who are increasingly aware of the strain on infrastructure around the country.
Compared to other tourism hotspots, New Zealand was not crowded by visitors.
Of the 120 million people who travelled from China last year, fewer than 400,000 came to New Zealand, he points out.
“In the scheme of things we’re still a very niche destination and we have to fight really hard to retain that.”
When someone comes along and says do you want to market New Zealand to the world, you kind of go ‘ yes’. It wasn’t a difficult decision. Stephen England- Hall ( above)