New Zealand and Maori owner/operator's; Stuart & Donna, say they are very
humbled to still be at number one, and heartfully thank their reviewers for
submitting their comments. The owner's also say it has been quite an
achievement, considering they are ‘just’ a husband and wife business.
Donna & Stuart applaud Tripadvisor for a very well orchestrated website,
and are simply amazed from the number of people who say they regard
Tripadvisor as the 'Traveler's Bible' – “you don’t leave home without
consulting it”. With the ability for reviewers to place photos and videos
along with their comments; (be they favourable or not!), makes for a real
candid report of tourism products that are available globally.
"This 'experience' of a product is the way a rating system should work",
says 'Coast to Coast Tours', "we are simply aghast how the Quality rating
and Awards systems in place in New Zealand do not 'experience' the actual
product when the assessor rates [in our case], the tour. We'd really like to
see a move made to change this, so as the assessment is not pre-announced,
and carried out by an incognito assessor who rates the product after their
experience, ….then the assessor can come back to look at the paper-work
after!".
Operating since 2002, 'Coast to Coast Tours' has seen a few changes in
Tourism.
“Today, with there being more emphasis on ‘experience’, [which is what
our tour has always been about], people are moving away from the large group
sightseeing coach tours”, says Stuart. “Our small and personalised tours of
west Auckland, (which also includes coming to our sheep farm & Homestead
which has been in our family since 1922), is what we present best.” ‘Coast
to Coast Tours’ also prides itself with being a ‘true’ eco-tour.
“Being a member of TIES (The International Ecotourism Society), has been
a real eye-opener for us”, says Donna. “There is a lot of ‘green washing
being done with ecotourism products. TIES sets out a certain standard, (the
basis of which is also used in Australia’s Eco-Certified tick-rating
system), of what an eco-tour actually consists of. These are; Nature,
Culture, Environmental and Conservation elements, and the ecotour must
contain all four components. As there’s little knowledge about this, we’ve
applied the word ‘true’ [eco-tour] in our marketing, so people don’t get
short-changed.”
Even though the ‘Coast to Coast Tours’ only operate in the region they
live, Donna & Stuart looked hard at their environmental footprint. “We found
that our biggest impact was our vehicle emissions, says Stuart. “This is
when we established our own
Native tree planting project where our tourists can purchase and plant
their own tree which is later planted on our farm. We wanted to be actually
‘doing’ something, rather than simply buy our carbon credits. It’s all to
easy just to write a cheque out at the end of the month, where’s the visitor
participation in that?. And operators can still run up a huge carbon
footprint!”
Stuart and Donna went at great lengths to secure the planting blocks of
their 100 acre sheep farm had Local Government covenants. “It was a long,
expensive and frustrating time to acquire these protection laws, but now all
of the planted trees will be protected”, said Stuart. The ‘Coast to Coast
Tours’ are very popular with visitors from all nations. “We really enjoy
meeting different people, and showing them around ‘our’ region”, say Donna
and Stuart. “But at the end of the day it’s all about customer satisfaction;
look after your customer, and they will look after you!”
‘Coast to Coast Tours’ was established in 2002. It is an all-inclusive,
owner/operated, small group eco-tour company with the primary focus on
showing overseas tourists the west Auckland region where the operator’s
family has lived since 1922.
Coast to Coast Tours (Auckland's Eco-tour and Farm Visit)
www.coast2coastnz.com
