Editorial: Tourism success exciting

The Bachelor TV show has let more than 7.8 million viewers see Rotorua.

Rotorua can no longer be accused of sitting back and waiting for the visitors to turn up after a couple of recent successes.

It was revealed last week The Bachelor TV crew from the United States spent time filming in Rotorua, with the New Zealand episode being screened this week.

It's a massive coup for Rotorua as it means our wee tourist town has been on the screens of more than 7.8 million viewers. Quite rightly, tourism leaders are pretty excited about the potential spinoffs - some which are already starting to filter through with Rotorua being mentioned more on Twitter and there being more hits on the RotoruaNZ.com website.

It's hard to gauge whether this will equate to Americans jumping on the plane and heading to Rotorua, but it's a good start. Just look at the big wins we took from the Lord of the Rings.

Our domestic visitors also seem to be coming back to Rotorua. This hasn't happened easily. The team at Destination Rotorua Marketing has been working hard to get New Zealanders to come to Rotorua with our Famously Rotorua campaign, which includes the new television ad.

It appears to be working. Rotorua has just been voted the third most popular school holiday destination in New Zealand, according to leading travel website Wotif.

Rotorua's position, behind Auckland and Wellington, was up 15 per cent on the last survey, which was the biggest increase of any destination.

A few years ago, there was criticism Rotorua was dropping the ball a little. We may have got too relaxed into thinking visitors would come here no matter what.

Some other cities took advantage of our too casual attitude and got ahead of us. But now we're back and ready to fight for our visitors again. Let's give them every reason to come here, and better still, come back.