Industry Insights - Trent Yeo

Kia Ora my name is Trent Yeo. I am from Ziptrek Ecotours.

We have many people from all parts of the world, but Asia is very strong and obviously China is a big growth. From South East Asia we actually have quite a lot of people, Singapore, Hong Kong. The more mobile and developed countries.

So understanding what our medium distance neighbours are doing and the growth they are having and their economic prosperity as they evolve is really important. We’ve got China the big mover, the sleeping giant, the dragon as such. We’ve got Indonesia which is really an undiscovered and realized market which doesn’t hit New Zealand hard now, but it will in time. It’s a massive population. A very mobile, agile, and young nation. You’ve got Taiwan obviously Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and even sort of Malaysia and Thailand as well close behind it. The one to watch is Vietnam, it’s the fastest growing probably in the region and a lot of things. So Vietnam will be an interesting one to look at as we go forward.

Halal tourism is on a massive growth as well. So when you look at China or Asia growth and then you look at halal tourism as an entity in itself. That’s another one to really watch because a lot of the halal markets are growing really hard as well. And so if you got anywhere near food, but there’s other elements to halal tourism which make it important. But if you go anywhere near food you just you have to adapt.

Understanding the culture and cultural nuances is part of high quality tourism experience. Anything that you can do to make it easier for somebody makes them more welcome. If you had a UnionPay sticker on your door, it was kind of like China welcome and that’s actually what I told you, not just that you took UnionPay. It doesn’t mean you are losing your character or not being true to your authentic self or anything like that. In my opinion it’s kind of like a handshake. You must put your hand forward in order to have a handshake.

It’s kind of as simple as that. We don’t need to do too much, but we do need to step towards each other. I think that if we really show people that we are giving it a go, then that’s the spirit that we would like to express. And I think that that’s something that people who are travellers will understand at least they tried. At least they understood, at least they didn’t make any assumptions.