Tourism New Zealand has just launched its latest marketing campaign to travel agents across the United States without stepping out of the office.

In a budget-friendly initiative that’s also believed to be a first for a national tourism organisation, the new campaign was launched on Friday by ‘webinar’ - with 85 participants dialling in and going online to be the first to hear details of the new campaign.

Participants were able to view the web-based presentation in real time online and call in over their telephones to hear Tourism New Zealand staff from Auckland, Wellington and Los Angeles talk them through the latest campaign, the research behind it and answer questions from the floor.

Tourism New Zealand Regional Manager North America Annie Dundas says using a ‘webinar’ to launch the campaign was the best way to reach partners spread across a broad geographical area.

"We have 350 Kiwi Specialist agents in the US, spread right across the country. We’ve found ‘Webinars’ to be really useful for training, but this is the first time they’ve ever been used for a campaign launch."

Tourism New Zealand has been running ‘webinar’ destination training sessions in North America since 2007, attracting an average of around 80 agents per session.

The training, called webNZday, was also launched to the German-speaking markets in Europe last October. Feedback has been very positive, with around 80 agents regularly joining these sessions.

Tourism New Zealand Chief Executive George Hickton says, "Webinars make it possible to get guest speakers and New Zealand experts to connect with offshore travel trade in a way that has not been possible in the past.

"The flexibility, as well as time and cost efficiency, means Tourism New Zealand can also offer more frequent and targeted training for agents in specific areas of interest."

To see what Webinar training is coming up in your area, see the events section.