Ruapehu i-SITEs win NZ conference and major award

Ruapehu i-SITEs win 2017 NZ conference and major customer service award

Ruapehu has been awarded the right to hold the 2017 national i-SITE Visitor Information Network conference and the Ohakune i-SITE has been awarded a Qualmark Customer Service Award.

The announcement of the conference and Customer Service Award was made at a gala dinner as part of this year's national i-SITE conference which is being held in Cromwell Central Otago.

Ruapehu i-SITE Manager Kim Treen said that the conference and the Qualmark Award reflected a lot of hard work from her team.

Ruapehu's i-SITE staff are all really passionate about the District and what it has to offer and that comes through in their interaction with customers, she said.

The i-SITE conference is a major opportunity to showcase everything Ruapehu has to offer to industry professionals whose job it is to advise travellers on what to see and do.

A big part of the conference is the delegates undertaking famils' which is the tourism industry term for tourism sales and marketing staff experiencing activities and seeing firsthand what a region has to offer so that they can better recommend Ruapehu to people.

At this year's conference there are over 120 delegates from i-SITEs from all around NZ finding out all about Central Otago.

Next year those 120 plus delegates will be finding out all about what Ruapehu has to offer.

Ruapehu Mayor Don Cameron said that the awarding of the conference and the Qualmark Customer Service Award continues Ruapehu's growing profile as a tourism hotspot'.

In addition to this success over the past year Ruapehu has had some significant other wins and recognition from the tourism sector.

Ruapehu's comparative advantages in tourism and visitor services saw us as being appointed as the lead agency in helping to identify regional tourism opportunities that now form part of the Accelerate25 Manawatu Whanganui Economic Action Plan programme.

We have also been trialling the placement of an official i-SITE in the Department of Conservation (DoC) Visitor Centre in Whakapapa Village which is a NZ first.

The success of this trial has seen Council commence discussions with the Army Museum in Waiouru about placing an i-SITE inside the Museum.

An economic impact study has shown that successful implementation of the Accelerate25 Manawatu-Whanganui Economic Action Plan could increase the Region's GDP by $66 million by 2025.

Council's investment in our tourism infrastructure such as the i-SITEs and Visit Ruapehu are a key component of how we will achieve the growth in our tourism sector that we are after, said Mayor Cameron.

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