Northland

Auckland

Hawkes Bay

Wanganui- Manawatu

Wellington

Nelson

Marlborough

Friendly Connections Ltd and Accommodation Promotions Services Ltd, work in partnership on the Internet to promote respectively New Zealand and Australian, Homestays, Farmstays, Bed and Breakfast, B&B’s, Guest Houses and Self Contained Accommodation.

Friendly Connections Ltd was originally created in April 1997 to promote New Zealand Farmstay and Homestay accommodation to a World Wide audience via the Internet on www.nzhomestay.co.nz. In 1999 a similar Australian web site was created to promote Australian Homestay and Farmstay accommodation. www.australianhomestay.com.

Friendly Connections Ltd in 2000 added to their then two web sites, premises that included Bed and Breakfast, B&B, accommodation, Guest Houses and Self Contained Accommodation from throughout New Zealand and also Australia.

The web sites enable a prospective Guest to plan and book their entire New Zealand or Australian Farmstay, Homestay, Bed and Breakfast, B&B, Guest House and Self Contained Accommodation, using the informative Region and Area Pages together with the individual attractive Host Home Pages. All of these Region, Area and Home Host pages are individually marketed to search engines.

In 2000 the New Zealand web site was upgraded using ColdFusion data base software. This upgrade enabled the number of booking requests and bed nights generated from the web sites, to be recorded in the data base.

It became possible for Friendly Connections Ltd to keep track of the actual bed nights, (not just visitors to the web sites), being requested from individual Farmstay, Homestay, Bed and Breakfast, B&B, Guest House and Self Contained Accommodation Hosts. 

The origin of these booking requests and number of bed nights being achieved by individual Homestays, Farmstays, Bed and Breakfasts, B&B’s, Guest Houses and Self Contained Accommodation enabled Friendly Connections Ltd to better target the marketing of individual Host’s Home Pages and the web site generally, to search engines.

As a result there has been a constant steady increase in the number of daily visitors to both the NZ and Australian web sites and in the number of booking requests and bed nights requested. 

In August 2002, the Australian Website was purchased by Accommodation Promotion Services Ltd and then upgraded using ColdFusion Software together with improvements gained from the experience of 5 years of operation of the New Zealand Website. These improvements were then brought back to the older NZ Website.

Friendly Connections Ltd and Accommodation Promotion Services Ltd plan to complete the introduction of a fully automated “immediate booking confirmation system” on both web sites later in 2003.

Digiweb NZ Ltd as Internet Providers, Hairy Lemon Web Solutions Ltd as Web Designers and Avatar Web Solutions as Specialist Marketer, complete a reliable and talented team that enables both web sites to provide the widest possible internet exposure for Homestay, Farmstay, Bed and Breakfast, B&B, Guest House and Self Contained Accommodation Hosts from NZ and Australia.