We are proud to share that we have become the first New Zealand agency to be named a finalist in the global Skift IDEA Awards, recognised in the "Industry Innovators: Tourism" category for our work creating the new Tonga Tourism destination brand.
More than 490 entries from around the world were submitted for the 2026 Skift IDEA Awards, which recognise innovative work shaping the future of travel and tourism.
Our finalist entry, “By the people, for the people – a living brand,” recognises our people-led approach to developing Tonga’s new destination brand, placing Tongan tourism stakeholders and communities at the heart of the research and brand development process.
“This is fantastic recognition for the Tomahawk team and, most importantly, for our partners at Tonga...
At the recent Tourism Export Council New Zealand conference, one of the key takeaways from industry leaders was clear: traditional booking trends and forward booking data can no longer be relied on in the way they once were.
Traveller behaviour around booking lead times has changed. People are making travel decisions at different points in their planning journey, with some booking well in advance while others are increasingly making decisions much closer to their travel date. The result is a booking landscape that is far less predictable than it used to be.
For tourism businesses, this creates a challenge. If you have historically looked at forward bookings and past booking patterns to determine when to turn your marketing on, increase your advertising spend or launch a...
For many tourism operators and small businesses, wearing multiple hats is just part of the job. You're the owner, the salesperson, the customer service team, the operations manager, and somewhere in between, you believe you can do all of the marketing too.
But it's a myth, in reality while DIY marketing has its place, trying to do everything yourself can eventually become one of the biggest barriers to growing your business.
Why Businesses Choose the DIY Route
It feels like a natural decision to manage your own marketing when no one knows your business better than you do, social media and AI tools make marketing look easy, and you're trying to keep costs down.
In the early stages of a business, doing your own marketing can make sense to help you understand your...
Your website might be attracting plenty of visitors, but if they're leaving without booking, your user experience (UX) could be letting you down. The good news? Small improvements often have a surprisingly big impact on direct bookings. In this article, we'll share seven UX features that help turn more website visitors into paying guests.
We design tourism websites with a focus on user experience and converting visitors to book. In this article, we'll walk through the seven UX features that make the biggest difference for tourism operators looking to boost direct bookings and reduce reliance on OTA commissions.
Quick guide: 7 UX features that drive bookings
Mobile-first responsive design: Captures the majority of travel traffic with fast, thumb-friendly...
We have officially welcomed our newest team member, Chip, an AI-generated T-Hawk with a smooth voice and endless enthusiasm for tourism and digital marketing. Well...technically he isn't that new. Chip was assembled somewhere in Silicon Valley and now calls a high-performance data centre home. It's warm, it's noisy, and apparently the Wi-Fi is excellent!
Chip is the voice behind Sound Advice for Tourism, our brand-new audio knowledge hub that brings its most popular tourism marketing resources to life for busy people who prefer listening over reading.
Each episode transforms one of our blogs or marketing guides into a short, conversational audio experience with actionable advice without the jargon.
"We wanted to make our content more accessible," says Renee Goodsell, our...
If you've been keeping half an eye on the marketing world lately, you've probably noticed a new alphabet soup floating around: AEO, GEO, and good old SEO.
For years, SEO was the only acronym tourism operators needed to know, now suddenly there are two more letters-based terms getting thrown into the mix, and understandably, a lot of our clients are asking us the same question: "Aren't these all just...the same thing?"
Not quite. And with the way people are searching for (and booking) their next adventure changing fast, it's worth understanding the difference before your competitors get there first.
Let's break it down.
First, a Quick Refresher: What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the practice you already know and love (or possibly love to hate)....
