Renaming the Waikato River Trails
November 27th, 2009 | by noel |Some interesting Search Engine statistics (well I think they are interesting!).
The exact phrase “New Zealand” gets 18000 searches a day on Google. The exact phrase “Lord of the Rings” gets 27000 searches a day – 50% more. (There are 164,000 searches a day that contain the words “lord of the rings” (i.e. in no particular order).
I reckon we should re-brand The Waikato River Trail “The Hobbit Trail” and extend it from Hobbiton (near Matamata) to Mt Pohaturoa (Mount Doom) near Atiamuri.
Fill the trail with dead Orcs and arrows etc (made out of fibreglass), create houses/huts with round doors at convenient spots (along with other creature comforts), hide easily “discoverable” trinkets and treasures along the track, and set up Tokoroa / Putaruru / Tirau / Arapuni / Mangakino / Whakamaru / Atiamuri as related destinations (for people who don’t want to walk/bike the trail).
Then promote the hell out of it in time for the release of “The Hobbit” movie.
Given that about 60m people are year are searching for SOMETHING to do with Lord of the Rings, in time “The Hobbit Trail” could surpass Queenstown as NZ’s top destination. (NZ total incoming tourists numbers are about 2.5m per year. Queenstown gets about 1.2m tourists a year).
Of course we probably need to clean up the Waikato waterways first – 70% of them are not fit for animals to drink from according to Environment Waikato.
Nevertheless, there is a sustainable tourist market on our doorstep.
See: http://www.waikatorivertrails.com/ for more details.
Don Brash and the 2025 Report - 700% WRONG!
