We all know by now the devastation that an Earth Event brings to the communities it visits. As the city of Christchurch struggles gamely to her feet, tourists are left wondering just how safe it is to visit New Zealand. While none of us can second guess Mother Nature, the people of New Zealand are sending messages into cyber space that New Zealand is still open for business. Blog4NZ , a 72 hour blogathon to promote New Zealand to the world has gone viral. The blogathon is a grassroots initiative organised by the crew at Indietravelmedia, who asked travel writers and travelers to set aside 72 hours from March 21 and to generate content about travelling to New Zealand.
“We want a total black-out of travel content across the world, we want Twitter dominated by Tweets about travelling to New Zealand,” said one of the crew organizing the event. ” We hope that all travel bloggers rally behind this cause and publish as many articles as possible throughout this period about travelling to New Zealand.”
With 11 hours to go and counting down, the event has been a major success with blogs flooding in and the twitter stream almost unable to keep up! This is something of the true Kiwi Spirit that sometimes I wonder if we have lost, the ability to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, dust off our jackets without waiting for handouts or instruction and just “get on with it.” If we had waited for Tourism New Zealand to employ consultants, to hold numerous meetings and then to come to an idea like this, the opportunity may well have passed. In any case, here we are in New Zealand, open for business 24/7 and waiting to welcome you here!
