New Zealand has been voted ‘Best Destination’ by readers in the Telegraph Travel Awards announced this morning in the UK.

Telegraph Group Travel Editor Graham Boynton said his readers had busy lives and liked New Zealand’s old-fashioned values and shared culture.

“People like the friendliness of the people, the serenity and the beautiful, unspoilt environment of New Zealand. They can get in tune with the place and relax with the people,” he said.

Mr Boynton added that New Zealand was a place people visited not for a few days, but for a few weeks, “to become part of things”.

The Telegraph has a readership of 2.5 million and a circulation of 1.2 million on Saturday.

Last month New Zealand won the Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards, being named ‘Overall Winner’ as well as ‘Best Destination’.

In October, New Zealand won the Observer/Guardian Reader’s Travel Awards for favourite long-haul destination.

Source: Tourism New Zealand Media Release

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Tourism New Zealand is banking on a fresh UK campaign and a giant inflatable rugby ball to get Brits out of a UK winter and down to New Zealand as the industry here faces tougher times.

The giant Rugby Ball has completed its Channel Crossing from storage in France and is now installed alongside London’s famous Tower Bridge.

The Ball is another phase in Tourism New Zealand’s campaign to woo British travellers to visit New Zealand now and in the run up to the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Tourism New Zealand chief executive George Hickton says the new UK campaign and the Ball have come at a vital time for New Zealand’s tourism industry, with visitor numbers dropping from many major markets, including the UK.

In September, Tourism New Zealand launched a $7.3 million campaign in the UK based on research that British travellers are most likely to make their travel decisions based on talking to other Brits.

The UK is New Zealand’s second largest tourist market with over 288,823 visitor arrivals in the year to October 2008. UK arrival figures have been in close to double digit growth for most of the last decade, but in the year to October growth slumped by minus 3.7 per cent.

Mr Hickton said the global credit crisis meant the New Zealand tourism industry was facing a slower summer as people were more cautious about travelling.

“Rather than pulling back on marketing, it is vital for New Zealand to invest in building our market share to sustain numbers from the UK and to position New Zealand well for when the upturn happens,” Mr Hickton added.

The Rugby Ball Venue has already proved itself to be an eye-catching way to build New Zealand’s profile. When it went up in Paris in the final stages of the Rugby World Cup 2007, more than 25,000 went through the ball and a further 138 million viewers, readers and listeners saw or heard about it.

Source: Tourism New Zealand Media Release

Visit our pages of New Zealand’s Main Rugby Centres: Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch

New Zealand researchers studying a rare and endangered species of penguin have uncovered a previously unknown species that disappeared about 500 years ago.

Bones found during research into New Zealand’s rare Hoiho or yellow-eyed penguin are thought to belong to the Waitaha which was hunted to extinction by the year 1500, about 250 years after the first humans arrived in New Zealand.

Researchers say it was the loss of the Waitaha that allowed the yellow-eyed penguin to thrive. Now it also faces extinction. Yellow eyed penguins are unique to New Zealand and are thought to be the world’s rarest penguins.

DNA testing
Philip Seddon of Otago University says the team testing DNA from the bones of prehistoric modern yellow-eyed penguins for genetic changes associated with human settlement, found some bones that were older - and had different DNA.

Seddon said dating techniques used on bones pulled from old Māori trash pits revealed a gap in time between the disappearance of the Waitaha and the arrival of the yellow-eyed penguin.

Competition
The gap seems to indicate that the extinction of the older bird created the opportunity for the newer to colonise New Zealand’s main islands, according to researchers. And they say that competition between the two penguin species may have previously prevented the yellow-eyed penguin from expanding north.

An estimated population of 7,000 yellow-eyed penguins are left in New Zealand and are the focus of an extensive conservation effort. In 1987 conservationists in Dunedin in the South Island formed the Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust which works to restore coastal forest and control predators.

Media Release: New Zealand Tourism

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