27 July 2010

45% increase in passengers from India

Over the past 12 months, Christchurch Airport has seen a 45% increase in passengers on flights from India to Christchurch.

“Christchurch Airport has been involved in joint venture marketing and promotion campaigns with Tourism New Zealand for the last few years, and this result is undoubtedly due to the success of these campaigns,” said CIAL General Manager Marketing and Business Development, Gareth Owen.

In the most recent campaign, CIAL partnered with Tourism New Zealand and Singapore Airlines to implement an online campaign in India during July which encourages travel to and around the South Island this spring.  The campaign targets the lucrative honeymoon market and takes its theme from the latest (and most popular) Bollywood movie, “I Hate Luv Storys”, which was partly filmed in Queenstown in January this year. The film is expected to be seen by 150 million people. "This was a fantastic opportunity for New Zealand to increase exposure in this developing market," commented Kevin Bowler, Chief Executive of Tourism New Zealand.

The online campaign was complemented by a special promotion from Singapore Airlines where they gave away two economy class fares to Christchurch. The promotion was advertised in various ways, including spot ads on MSN, Hotmail, Yahoo India, NDTV, Facebook India and Google, as well as an optimised Google keyword search.

“Christchurch Airport is the gateway for 92% of all tourists to the South Island, and we are committed to working with airlines and tourism organisations to further build this market,” said Gareth Owen.