The New Zealand Automobile Association will host tourism marketing, guides and web operations under a partnership formed with Australian Automobile Clubs.
The business, to be called Club Tourism Publishing, will be based in Auckland. Peter Blackwell, currently the AA’s general manager of tourism, will be its chief executive.
The partners are positioning Club Tourism Publishing as the South Pacific’s leading tourism publishing and media business.
“This will allow the AA to market the New Zealand tourism industry directly to the 6.5 million members of the Australian Automobile Clubs,” Blackwell says. “By establishing this trans-Tasman tourism business, we have created a very powerful marketing opportunity for Kiwi businesses.”
He says the AA has been innovative in web development. It uses Filemaker 10 to publish on the fly and MySQL as its web platform.
“We’ve got a very solid team, and there are cost advantages to doing this in New Zealand,” Blackwell says.
The partnership will create several new jobs in New Zealand, he says.