PM tireless promoter of destination NZ

Tourism writer SIMON HENDERY joins the Prime Minister on a three-day whirlwind tour of New York and Los Angeles in the second of a three-part look at how this country markets itself in the United States.

Thursday, December 12: In a drab television studio off New York's Times Square, Helen Clark is delivering a sales pitch for destination New Zealand.

It is a spiel she will repeat 22 times that morning.

After giving four radio interviews over the phone, the Prime Minister takes her seat in the studio and begins the first of 18 five-minute satellite linkups with stations across the US.

The subject: her part in a new travel documentary, New Zealand: The Royal Tour.

While her three-day whistle-stop tour of the US will include UN meetings and other engagements, its prime purpose is to plug the documentary she helped to make in April.

A question about security during an interview with Phoenix's KSAZ is a chance to reinforce the image of this country as safe and serene.

"Even Bali is something like 7000km away," says Clark.

New Zealand's isolation from the world's troublespots is a message worth pushing as American travellers increasingly seek out "safe" holiday destinations.

A record 201,000 US visitors arrived in the past year, making it our third-biggest tourist market behind Australia and Britain.

Friday, December 13: Clark is in front of the cameras again, this time on the nation's top-rated morning programme, NBC's Today Show.

Millions of viewers see video clips from the documentary of the Prime Minister and Royal Tour presenter Peter Greenberg traipsing through snow in the Southern Alps and dangling from ropes in a Waitomo Caves sinkhole.

"The message is that if a couple of old 50-somethings can do this, then anyone can," Clark tells host Katie Couric - an important message given New Zealand's marketing pitch is to those near or at retirement who can afford to travel across the Pacific.

Tourism New Zealand chief executive George Hickton says the Prime Minister's involvement with the documentary and her enthusiasm in promoting it will provide a strong boost for New Zealand's profile in the US.

Saturday, December 14: Greenberg, a veteran journalist and broadcaster, hosts Clark on his two-hour weekly travel radio show on California's high-rating KABC Talk Radio where she fields questions covering everything from New Zealand's race relations to its weather.

Larger-than-life Greenberg is a tireless enthusiast for New Zealand and delights in telling the story of how, on his first visit to Auckland in the mid-1970s, he entertained himself by spending a day in the public gallery of the courthouse.

He knew it was a safe country, he says, because the charges criminals were facing were so trivial.

Sunday, December 15: Clark is back in New Zealand when the Royal Tour premieres to an audience of 4.7 million viewers on the cable Travel Channel. It will be screened up to 12 times in the next year and will also be broadcast worldwide on the Discovery Channel, to a potential audience of more than 150 million households in 11 countries.

Tourism NZ, which contributed about $250,000 to the cost of production, says the Travel and Discovery channels are an ideal medium for reaching the potential tourists New Zealand wants - wealthy, experienced travellers who stay longer to seek out an "authentic" experience.

Tourism NZ has a $3 million "global media partnership" deal with Discovery Network which involves the screening of advertisements, documentaries and short "vignettes" about New Zealand.

Gregg Anderson, Tourism NZ's US and Canada regional manager, says the agency plans to capitalise on New Zealand's high profile - a result of the America's Cup, The Lord of the Rings and the Clark documentary - through a US$2.2 million advertising campaign which will run from this month to April.

It is one of the most expensive New Zealand tourism campaigns ever run in the US. Tourism NZ will contribute US$1.5 million and Air New Zealand and nine travel wholesalers will pick up the rest.

* Simon Hendery travelled to the US as a guest of Tourism NZ.

* Tomorrow: Cashing in on Middle-earth - what The Lord of the Rings is doing for tourism.