Tourism Colabs for 2025

Collaboration is a most interesting hack for tourism in 2025.

Depending on the goal, partnering up makes so much sense.

Yet a lot of the time tourism businesses try to do it all on their own.

Adding more work to an already busy (24/7/365) plate.

Maybe it's because they don't know about other options or maybe they're trying to keep it all to themselves.

The cool thing about partnerships is it's a way to grow together.

Share some risk, unlock new ideas, find different revenue channels and gather some fresh audiences.

I've seen some best in class examples in the last couple of months:

Mana Tāhuna Charitable Trust x Queenstown Airport (ZQN) What do you have to do to get Jason Momoa to share his lunch to 16.7M instagram followers? It's gotta be something good. That's what happened when he was in Queenstown last week. I don't think he would've done this if it wasn't a unique colab. Brave move from the airport to have the mix of fire and food near the runway. But this alone has a great payoff. And it was temporary (there for a week). This also shows how a colab is a good way to test out something new before committing full time.

Rogues and Royals (Felix) x Rifters; a local Arrowtown belt maker working with a local Arrowtown gin distillery. On their own, sure they're good but working together; they go from product to experience. Make your own belt followed by a private gin tasting. (PS these two would also make great Christmas presents for anyone lacking ideas).

The Camp (Sarah) x The Secret Sauna: The Camp have an amazing property on the shore of Lake Hāwea. What could make this even better? A sauna. Definitely a cool (hot) way to add value to the all year round visitor proposition for The Camp and fully utilise the area. Also a nice way to bring in the locals.

On the business front, I got a call from Zac at Maverick Digital to talk about a bold new tourism project. Asking if I was keen colab? Safe to say I was in. I'm pretty sure he could've done this on his own but together (hopefully!) we can create something even better for the client. Flights booked and can't wait to see this come together in 2025.

Safet to say, 2 businesses that do a good thing on their own can do something even better together.

There's a more interesting future for those in tourism looking to team up.