The Tourism Service Award for June goes to...

Virtual New Zealand

The attention to detail here is excellent. As well as offering three viewing options to cater for differing screen sizes and preferences, the site features very detailed information about New Zealand. The content is a bit broader than tourism and travel, including many statistics, facts and figures, even Treaty of Waitangi information. The travel 'stuff' is easy to find however, and divided into useful segments such as 'quick tours', 'city tours', 'regional tours' and 'photos'. A search engine provides a convenient short-cut to pertinent parts of the site. Being a large site, it's not surprising that one or two areas were still 'under construction'. We were pleased to see a 'What's New' section, a useful tool for the repeat visitor not wanting to tread 'old ground'. Whilst this is not strictly a tourism site, it does draw a blue print for what a tourism site could be. It also creates quite a unique user experience, something which many sites fail to do.

© 1999 Discover New Zealand Magazine