New Zealand is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. It is well known for its breath-taking scenery, amazing landscapes, and unique wildlife. The country has a lot to offer to its visitors, offering activities ranging from hiking in national parks, biking tours through stunning countryside, wine tasting in great wineries, or enjoying fine dining at top restaurants in some of the country’s biggest cities.
New Zealand’s tourism industry is the country’s third-largest export earner and results in one out of every ten New Zealanders having a job. However, in March 2020, due to the global pandemic, the NZ government has decided to close the borders until further notice.
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Finding New Business opportunity When the Global pandemic badly hit the Tourism Industry
The pandemic had a devastating effect on many people, especially the tourism industry in New Zealand, but Nick Jones, a tour agent based in Christchurch converted this situation into an opportunity.
The Christchurch-based tour operating company he works for was forced to reduce his working hours because of the virus spread which allowed him more space in other areas such as finding new keyword research related to New Zealand tourism.
Nick found that New Zealand is a great destination for wine tours and there is still more scope to focus on Wine tours. He came up with a wine tour booking website from where travelers can book wine tours to any wineries in New Zealand. However, a few months later, he decided to drop his project.
“Working on a Wine tour booking website is still a good idea. However, it won’t bring up a huge profit.” – Said Nick.
His tour company is doing wine tours for less than $200 pp and if he manages to sell one of them, he will get a 10% commission which is just $20. To make a $1K profit through the website, might take a few months of work. So he started focusing on much better ideas.
After dropping the wine tour project, he came up with an idea to sell honeymoon packages to New Zealand globally. Discussing with his employer, he made a fair deal and commission rates and released his honeymoon vacation booking website New Zealand Honeymoon Packages Ltd.
“Honeymoon Packages always cost a few grand in NZ and the price goes up depending on the number of days the clients want to stay. An average sale will be about $5K and I receive a $500 commission from a single sale.” – Said Nick.
What all services do New Zealand Honeymoon Packages Ltd Offers?
New Zealand Honeymoon Packages Ltd primarily focuses on providing honeymoon vacations for newlyweds in New Zealand. Since the parent tour operating company has well-established tour itineraries all over New Zealand, it was very easy to create honeymoon itineraries.
Tourism is “a big category,” with most clients in either “view mode” or “buy mode,” with the money only being made in buy mode, Nick said. By taking a cost-efficient approach, New Zealand Honeymoon Packages Ltd is converting its web visitors from view mode to buy mode more quickly on their website.
There are many honeymoon travelers who don’t want to compromise the quality of their vacation, and so they prefer going for a luxury honeymoon vacation. This bought an idea to sell premium honeymoon packages on the website which cost approximately $30K for a couple for 21 days. So far Nick manage to sell 15 premium honeymoon vacations which bring half of his net profit.
Flexibility is what makes New Zealand Honeymoon Packages Ltd unique. When someone books a tour package from online travel portals such as TripAdvisor, Expedia, GetYourGuide, etc, the option to modify the itinerary is very limited. However, New Zealand Honeymoon Packages Ltd is directly operated and so, complete modification of the itinerary is possible.
If a client wants to add or reduce 1 day from the itinerary, we can easily do that, or if they want to add a particular activity on their vacation, that’s also an easy-peasy job for us. Nick told EntrepreneursBreak.
Future plan
Since the borders are still closed and the bookings are for the 2022 summer, Nick has to wait for a few months to receive commission shares from his parent company. The booking margin has crossed the $1m figure so far and the profit will be around $100K.
Australian borders are expected to be open in January 2022, which is great news for the business as most of the bookings are from Australia.
“Half the profit will be reinvested back to the business for marketing and advertising purposes.” – Said Nick.
