Tourism New Zealand leverages GuideGeek travel AI technology to drive engagement

International

Travelers planning a trip to New Zealand can now get inspiration and tips from an AI trip planner powered by Matador Network’s industry-leading GuideGeek chat platform. The AI trip planner was also configured to assist with the launch activity of Tourism New Zealand’s fully playable destination in Minecraft.

Visitors to newzealand.com are greeted with recommended prompts that address known knowledge gaps and barriers to booking such as “How long are flights to New Zealand?” and “Show me the best things to do each season.” From there, visitors can converse with the AI, asking follow-up questions and exploring their specific interests. The personalized, real-time responses are generated by AI trained on extensive data from Tourism New Zealand, regional tourism organisations and tourism business operators from across the country, coupled with more than 1,000 integrations for travel information from GuideGeek’s award-winning technology.

To celebrate the release of A Minecraft Movie, Tourism New Zealand, in collaboration with 11 mana whenua groups (Māori tribal groups), the New Zealand tourism industry, Warner Bros., and Mojang Studios (the developers of Minecraft), launched New Zealand as the first fully playable destination in the Minecraft world.

When users ask the New Zealand AI trip planner questions about destinations depicted in Minecraft, the responses include images from the fully playable game, which features simulations of activities from the incredible locations featured throughout gameplay, such as Waitomo’s Glowworm caves.

“We recently launched a test of GuideGeek that performed very well and demonstrated how using tools like this can help people move from just dreaming about a visit, to discovering what their trip might look like, to encouraging them to book,” says Tourism New Zealand General Manager Marketing Brodie McLeish. “Our fully playable Minecraft destination is the world’s first, and a major initiative for us this year, and integrating GuideGeek into this campaign has helped further build on its creativity and drive to grow visitor arrivals. It’s been amazing to see how visitors are using the AI to plan trips inspired by locations in the game.”

Approximately 200,000 unique users have interacted with Tourism New Zealand’s AI across the site since it launched in late 2024. Those who have interacted with the AI experience have 600% more interactions than the average visitor across the site. Following the Minecraft campaign, the AI has over 50,000 active users across multiple key source markets for Tourism New Zealand.

“Tourism New Zealand has long been one of the most innovative and successful DMOs (destination marketing organizations) in the world, both because of their incredible team and the variety and splendor their destination has to offer,” says Ross Borden, CEO of Matador Network, which created GuideGeek. “To create a Minecraft version of their destination is really next level, and it’s a brilliant application of GuideGeek to help visitors explore New Zealand — both in the game and then in person.”

New Zealand is the first destination to integrate GuideGeek artificial intelligence technology into a partner campaign with a major brand such as Minecraft, and the first to include suggested prompts in a large dedicated section on its homepage. These innovations have dramatically increased engagement with the AI and driven key business objectives.

“Tourism New Zealand is a very data-driven DMO — they test everything,” says Matador Network CTO Stefan Klopp. “Now that they’ve proven that adding calls to action spurs engagement with the AI, the next step is rolling out content-aware calls to action on thousands of pages of newzealand.com so that if you’re reading a page about dining in Wellington, for example, you get suggested prompts about how to find restaurants or activities that fit what you’re looking for in the area.”