Flight Centre helping to promote the
Cook Islands

Guest speaker at opening night on Monday at the Crown Beach resort for the Cook Islands Tourism Industry Forum was Flight Centre executive, James Booker.
He was introduced by his friend and associate, Chris Ingram, who is the Cook Islands Tourism Corporation representative for New Zealand.
Flight Centre is a specialist brand leader with a global presence with 20% market share in the travel industry (in New Zealand) with head office in Australia.
Booker said he is an Australian but is now based in NZ and his statistics for the NZ consumer are: a population of 4.3 million; 1.9 international departures of which 56,000 come to the Cook Islands.
It is very competitive market and compared our costs to other destinations in the Pacific. For instance, Fiji has fares of $599 including 4 nights accommodation compared to $699 for airfares to Cook Islands.
He too was upbeat about the possibilities for increasing visitor numbers to Cook Islands because it was such an attractive destination.
Flight Centre has its own $500,000 advertising budget for marketing campaigns in the year with Booker assuring the industry that the company always includes Cook Islands as a destination in their advertising. Booker said marketing efforts for 2010 include boosting numbers for March/May/August with advertising campaigns on television and in the press.
This is good news for Cook Islands as Flight Centre is one of the three top players in their industry so they have a good position in the market place in Australia as well as in New Zealand.

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