Cook Islands Tourism Explains Future Directions

Executives from the Cook Islands Tourism Corporation made presentations to update stakeholders on its future direction.
In the Global Breakfast Update at the Edgewater Resort and Spa conference room, Cook Islands Tourism directors made presentations on aviation, finance and administration, global marketing and destination development.
Corporation chief executive officer Halatoa Fua, who gave an update on aviation, said they discussed a number of key issues.
“We usually get an update from our general managers in the markets, New Zealand, Australia, North America and Europe.
They discuss market insights (such as) co-op campaigns, public relations/media, airline and trade activities,” Fua said.
“However in this meeting, we did a head office update to discuss where the corporation is heading.”
In his update, Fua talked about how the board discussions on tourism issues had changed between 2010 and now.
“In 2010, some of the tourism issues we focused in the board meeting were corporation-specific such as governance, financial management, destination marketing confined to limited funding, limited market intelligence and recovering tourism growth.
“In 2017, our discussion of tourism issues are relating more nationwide or at a macro level. These issues include infrastructure (both public and private), room capacity ceiling, environmental degradation and waste management, human resource/labour and visitor experience – (getting a) driver’s licence, dogs, crime, etc.”
Fua also discussed the changing environment and the industry’s outlook.
Cook Islands Tourism’s director of sales and marketing, Karla Eggelton, said her focus on the destination marketing presentation was to inform the industry on the key activities and results of the last financial year.
Eggelton also spoke on the strategic direction set for the next three to five years.
Key pillars of work sit under a framework including B2B (business to business), B2C (business to consumer), PR (public relation) and C2C (consumer to consumer), she said.
“Of key interest was the work in the digital space, in particular the new global website launched on December 5 last year and the results around a robust social strategy,” Eggelton said.
“Members of the public and industry were introduced to the new three to five year Marketing Strategy Document (Turoto 2022) that will provide a global benchmark of Destination Marketing Organisation best practice concepts.
“This will assist in reviewing the individual work of our source markets as well as collectively in an effort to continue to achieve results.
“The key here is measurable activity and return on investment.”
 
(Source: Cook Islands News September 2017)