Yesterday the usual fascinating instructive entertaining TRM Daily Report – composed before brekki in a panic – was loaded with ominous predictions on the likely outcome of a meeting to decide the future direction for promoting Turangi.
First off, I have to admit I lost a bet yesterday. The bet was that DGLT (Destination Great Lake Taupo) would already have worked out their own recipe for Turangi and we would be hearing how they were going to market us?. This has been the situation in past years and we had no reason to differ. You will be amazed to hear that I could not have been more wrong. Yikes! Of course I blamed SWMBO.
The reason for the meeting was explained by DGLT General Manager Damian Coutts in his introduction as:
1 DGLT need an image from us to sell the concept of Turangi to tourists.
2 We/they need to get it right this time.
3 They are determined to more than just talk about it but to get it to the market.
Then the new DGLT Marketing Manager Anna McLaren separated us into smaller groups to comment on:
1 Turangi’s current position
2 Turangi’s future vision.
3 Barriers and challenges to face.
The outcome was to focus on the single best feature (aka USP (Unique Selling Point – see we know all the fancy jargon now) of the region and concentrate all images and promotion on that. There were so many worthy contenders competing for the USP including NZ’s best one day walk – the Tongariro Crossing, Tongariro National Park for skiing and tramping, fishing, rafting, walking, biking the Tongariro River Trail, cultural heritage stuff, the North Island’s only underground power station, T2T (Taupo to Turangi) bike trail, etc.
(Team Turangi on right are the enthusiastic team from Turangi iSite.)
So what did the three groups all concur on?
The Tongariro River!.
That is our special “USP” that no other town anywhere in the world can compete with. So can you please keep it to yourself – OK? – as it is not official yet.
Now DGLT will now concentrate on marketing that USP and arrange for an iconic image of the mighty T river to incorporate fishing, walking, rafting and biking – which will be used extensively on all publicity material.
So Congratulations to Christine at GoTongariro for arranging the meeting and to Damian Coutts and Anna McLaren at DGLT for coming to Turangi to “listen” to stakeholders rather than lecturing us. And congratulations to all the other ‘stakeholders’ for their wise decision. What a relief!
