A great turnout of nearly 100 retail agents attended the inaugural regional VISIT USA New Zealand event on Monday night at Club Maunganui in the Bay of Plenty. The agents were treated to a ninety minute educational trade show format where they visited with 24 USA suppliers including airlines, car rental partners, destination partners, hotels, railroads, coach and cruise companies.
Two quick fire rounds of educational trivia round was the highlight of the evening and saw 3 agents take out the top 32 major prizes or land and air packages while an additional grand prize was provided to a winner of a “dream trip to the USA” contest done during registration.
Prize Package 1 – Amanda Hoyt from You Travel BOP won a 4 night package to Pacific Beach Hotel in Waikiki courtesy of Hawaii Tourism, 100 000 HA Miles from Hawaiian Airlines and 2 days complimentary car hire courtesy of Alamo Rent a car for her creative response to the dream trip to the USA contest.
Prize Package 2 – Julie Slevwright from You Travel Taupo won an 8 night Anaheim package with accommodation, transfers and Disney hopper passes courtesy of Visit Anaheim and will get there with firm seats to LAX compliments of American Airlines. These seats were upgraded to extra comfort on the night. Julie scored 38/48 on the USA Trivia Program.
Prize Package 3 – Anita Burgess from NZ Travel Brokers has won return flights from Auckland to Anchorage via Houston courtesy of Air New Zealand and United Airlines. With land content of 15 nights in Alaska including stays in Anchorage, Denali and Seward, with a 7 night Alaskan Dream Cruise, a cruise and stay courtesy of Major Marine and a trip both Northbound and Southbound on the Alaska Railroad. Courtesy of Air New Zealand, United Airlines, Visit Anchorage, Major Maine Tours, Alaska Railroad and Alaskan Dream Cruises.
There were also many spot prizes won throughout the evening.
Total arrivals to the US from New Zealand for 2015 increased by over 10% to 296,000 on the previous year. This was before the added capacity to the USA when AA and US joined the other carriers. Competitive airfares are now just something else that will drive visitation due to increased supply.
“With the arrival of a range a new flight services over the last 12 months to the USA this has once again delivered an opportunity for significant growth in visitation from Australia and New Zealand to the USA, well above official visitor forecasts, said Visit USA Chairman Corey Marshall. It is due to all of this capacity as well as the feedback we continue to hear from agents that they would like more regional support that we as vested USA partners have begun our regional show series in the Bay of Plenty. This will be the first of more to come as we focus on more education and visits to regional centres in both the North & South Island. It was an overwhelming success on Monday in The Mount.”
For more information please contact:
Corey Marshall
Chairman of VUSA NZ
+642155463
