Kiwi travel’s never looked so good
You may have noticed a change on our cover this week. Welcome to the first issue of Stuff Travel in your Sunday Star-Times. When our borders closed, we launched our Back Your Backyard campaign and it was an instant hit.
We saw audience numbers in the millions for our content, breaking any pre-Covid records we’d set.
It showed us that as intrepid as Kiwis are, there’s nothing quite like exploring Aotearoa.
In this weird pandemic landscape, we’re not sure when we’ll be travelling the world again, but there’s so much more of our country we still want to show you.
So it feels timely to update our brand and name. We’re still all about escapes and the escapist thrills that travel offers, it’s just that for the foreseeable future that will be less about visions of sun-kissed Santorini, or getting lost in distant, sprawling metropolises, and much more about, well, your backyard.
In the Stuff Travel survey we ran recently, a whopping 82 per cent of more than 11,000 respondents told us they want to travel within New Zealand this year.
And over the past few months many of you have emailed to tell me how you had no idea such unique experiences existed in our backyard. So while we’re hunkered down here together, why not make the most of it? We’re dedicating more space to tell you those great local travel stories in the Sunday Star-Times.
Join us each week as Brook Sabin and Radha Engling uncover Aotearoa’s hidden gems and quirky experiences.
Learn to be a more mindful and responsible traveller with Lorna Thornber’s green travel column.
Writer and documentary film-maker Kim Webby lives and works in te ao Ma¯ori. She’ll be exploring the history and legends behind some of our well-loved tourist spots.
Pamela Wade’s World Famous in NZ column will continue to highlight our uniquely Kiwi experiences, sharing why they are worth checking out.
We’ll also bring you the latest news from the industry, new hotels to check out, as well as exceptional travel deals.
And we’d like to hear more from you. What do you love, hate, and want to see more of when it comes to travel?
In this week’s cover story, Brook and Radha tell us about the time they spent in Dunedin.
I was lucky enough to spend 24 hours there just before Auckland went into lockdown 2.0 and what I saw left me wanting to head back for more . . . incredible architecture, cool cafes, amazing designer shopping, and the wildliferich Otago Peninsula.
As Brook and Radha illustrate in their story, who needs international travel when we have so much right here?
And if you’re wondering where to find your favourite Culture content, it has a new home in Sunday magazine. Sunday editor Emily Simpson says: ‘‘We fancy ourselves as pretty cultured over at Sunday magazine, so we’re stoked to be adding reviews of books, podcasts, movies, TV, and music to our mix. We’ve always celebrated creative New Zealanders and this new content feels like a natural fit.’’