1. Introduction.
In spite of the time of the year, forward bookings are still arriving. Enquiries from prospective tourists about New Zealand’s attractions and its accommodation are also being regularly received by our web master.
During May there were bookings received from 8 different countries for as far out as the end of 2004, for just under 15% of our Hosts.
Over the 3 months we intend to implement some suggestions from Hosts that will improve the user friendliness of some aspects of www.nzhomestay.co.nz
One of these is the addition of more names to the ‘source’ drop down menu used when Hosts enter bookings from other sources. If you have some other ‘sources’ of bookings that you would like specifically included in the drop down menu, to save you time in the future, please email them to me at peter@nzhomestay.co.nz
In future, if Hosts wish to have reciprocal links from their Home Page to an attraction in their area, we will be pleased to include these, if the Host wishes to arrange these. There will be a small charge to cover the cost of our Consultants activating each link. It is expected that such links will improve the search engine ranking of each Host’s Home Page and thus bring more visitors to that particular Home Page.
2. Statistics. May 2004 May 2003
Total Visitors for the month 15,608 (9 % increase) 14,267
Average Visitors per day 503 (9 % increase) 460
Average Hits per visitor 11.05 11.12
No. of Hits 170,611 (10 % increase) 154,918
3. General.
During May we welcomed ‘The Stone Stable Cottage’ of Kakanui, Hosts Dorothy & Duncan McKenzie and also ‘Karobahn Lodge’, Hosts Caroline & John Lartice, of Stavely. Three more Hosts will be welcomed in the next newsletter.
A little bit of trivia. We have noticed that www.nzhomestay.co.nz has moved up from number 3 in the world on Google when the word ‘homestay’ on its own is used, to number 2.
