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By
Karla Eggelton, Director of Marketing & Sales

Global launch of new Cook Islands website

Cook Islands Tourism Corporation announces the launch of its new consumer website.   The Corporation has now successfully unified its digital presence, with a website catering to all market needs. CEO Halatoa Fua comments “the website is a key tool in the corporation’s digital marketing work and will assist in the ongoing objective of creating awareness for the Cook Islands.”

Having gone live 05 December cookislands.travel boasts a new look and new content promoting the destinations ‘love a little paradise’ brand.  Teaming up with Sydney based Core Agency, CI Tourism Corp worked side by side on the twelve week project, making the move to a fully open source and responsive platform.  The Corporation developed new content for the site, adding much needed video and imagery to reflect the love a little paradise theme.  The exercise aided in crafting more than 50 new short and long video clips spanning the breadth of all key messages about the Cook Islands and what there is on offer.

Since launch date the marketing team have been working through some teething issues and fine-tuning as well as uploading private sector business information.  “The priority for us is ensuring cookislands.travel is more than an information portal.  We want new and returning visitors to find depth and relevance in our content and use our website for all stages of the path to purchase” says Director of Sales & Marketing Karla Eggelton adding that “Emphasis was therefore placed on the user experience, providing relevant and engaging information, along with positive journey mapping and conversion measurement.”   

The first quarter is a busy time for our key markets (New Zealand, Australia, USA, Canada) with major promotional activity.  This website supports localised content for different countries around the world. It will have a centralised database and CMS, but have country-specific logins, so each country manager can manage their own content. Each localised version of the site will have a combination of shared ‘generic’ content and tailored country-specific content.  It is planned that key advertising will be directed to this portal for maximum exposure and sales opportunity.  “While our multiple tourism sites have performed well in the past few years, we expect to see exponential engagement with this universal approach we have adopted by improving cost efficiencies and investing in digital marketing.  Our social media activity will also work hand in hand in driving traffic to the site” says Eggelton

Next steps are to bring online foreign language versions – starting with German, Italian, Spanish, French, Chinese and Japanese – expected to be completed this year.

“Once the consumer site is delivering to full function and expectation, efforts will be concentrated on a corporate site catering to the needs of our industry members on island and abroad. One of the key outcomes in this second phase will be a re-invigorated, engaging, effective and interactive Specialists Training Programme” advises Eggelton.