http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/6781672/Air-NZ-deal-with-Department-of-Conservation
The Government and Air New Zealand boss Rob Fyfe have confirmed a three-year commercial partnership between the Department of Conservation and the national carrier.
The $1m-a-year deal will see travel and marketing support of conservation programmes around the National Parks Great Walks network, species translocations around the country and promotion of the Great Walks themselves.
"... and also help promote these gems in New Zealand's natural tourism crown to domestic and international tourists like never before."
"Air New Zealand's marketing plans for the Great Walks include development of flight and hut packages and high-end group experiences on conservation land, promotion through its million-strong frequent flyer database and local and international marketing and social media activity".
Not too sure what DoC might have conceded here, but ANZ is looking to target bringing in customers specificly to hike selected walks.
Things are going to get busy.
well its not like you can put any more people on the tracks at peak times sincee they are booked out anyway,, maybe it will increase those periods when they arent full.... but if doc advertise airnz on their online booking website it would increaes the likelihood of those coming to use their airline....
cant say i like walks like the kepler and routeburn being in the glossy brochures to anyone who wants to take a crack, those tracks have proven to be killers for the ill prepared or those who want to ignore gear or weather advice from doc.....
"Fyfe said the partnership represented an important expansion of the airline's environment strategy."
You'd think the best thing Air NZ could do for the environment would be to either run fewer flights, or seriously reduce the emissions of the planes they fly and invest in alternative forms of mass transport but perhaps that's not commercially viable for them. Part of me wonders if this is just Air NZ wanting to have a few good-looking conservation-like themes to use in their marketing material, save a few birds, find someone to push through Great Walks and splash their photo around, and the Great Walks remain about as full as they are already. Those that have off-season periods might fill up for the entire time or become even more expensive due to higher demand, which would suck.
On the other hand it could be good if part of Air NZ's strategy is to assist people who'd be coming here for tramping anyway, and make it easy for them to buy things like Hut Passes as part of the package.
"Not too sure what DoC might have conceded here, but ANZ is looking to target bringing in customers specifically to hike selected walks."
I wonder if it's more likely that Air NZ will be flying tourists from high dollar-value countries to remote beefed-up huts for a "high end group experience".
"I wonder if it's more likely that Air NZ will be flying tourists from high dollar-value countries to remote beefed-up huts for a "high end group experience". "
yup thats why they are only tageting the great walks, they ight also look at bringing in the guided walking companies who are also in their market....
bt there are still a great deal of peope who fly from overseas to walk any number of our tracks of any difficulty
theh great walks is a pretty finite market thats already heavily saturated, have air nz really done their sums, there are so few extra people htey are really going to attract given the size o their whole operation...
Another possibility is that they're just trying to poach the existing tramping tourists from other airlines, resulting in roughly the same number of Great Walk and similar visitors as there are already but worth far more than $1m/year to Air NZ.
DoC's pushing it through Sirocco on Twitter and Facebook -- https://twitter.com/#!/Spokesbird/status/193206443145576448
The facebook post has a few comments from people, all very positive.
airlines pay lip service to the environment, the most efficient aircraft for fuel usage are prop driven aircraft... but no long range air fleet would touch them because they are slower and when everyone is using jets for long haul you don't have a choice so jets it is....
there wont be any really serious steps made in alternative fuels while there is stll enough fosil fuels around they still represent the best profit for the oil companies..
some say there are water powered engines around but they won't be released because no one makes money with water. and the oil companies are suppposed to have the rights to those engines
To be fair, if Air New Zealand reduced its services for environmental reasons, it'd just open the door for another airline to come in and do exactly the same thing, and on a global scale they're still a dot compared with all the aircraft activity over North America and Europe. For any real change, there needs to be some decent regulation if there's no other incentive, which there doesn't seem to be.
there won't be a cahng until fuel prices hit a threshold where business drops to the point of making current airline aircraft uneconomical to operate.
