Description:

WellingtonNZ serves as an economic development agency committed to promoting Wellington as the place to live, work, study, and visit in New Zealand. Its mission is to create a thriving region for all. This encompasses promoting visitation, supporting business growth, fostering screen media production, and promoting major events.

The Covid-19 pandemic had a profound impact on Wellington, stalling tourism and affecting economic performance due to widespread remote work adoption. This period, however, allowed WellingtonNZ to reassess tourism's value, recognising that residents are the city's most vital advocates. These residents drive the economy, enrich culture, and foster community vibrancy. Thus, WellingtonNZ aimed to ensure locals love their city, which in turn would naturally attract external visitors, and enhance the experience of visitors during their stay.

WellingtonNZ sought to create a new digital platform to elevate Wellington's profile as a destination. The goal was to inspire residents and attract visitors, students, businesses, and investors through engaging and accessible content that showcased everything the Wellington region has to offer. This required consolidating up to 10 independent sites into one seamless experience while simultaneously promoting local events, businesses, and ongoing initiatives.

As New Zealand's creative hub, Wellington needed a digital presence that enhanced and reflected its vibrancy and engaged both locals and visitors. The design focused on four success factors:
– Attract: Develop an immersive experience showcasing Wellington's events, hospitality, retail, and entertainment, enhancing its appeal with sophistication and surprise.
– Validate: Highlight Wellington's lifestyle, cultural diversity, successful businesses, and opportunities, demonstrating how individuals can thrive there.
– Activate: Encourage engagement to support businesses, boost economic performance, and drive regional vibrancy.
– Liberate: Simplify the platform's technical management to allow more focus on content and less on code maintenance.

The design needed to balance creativity with user-exploration. A crafted taxonomy and related content blocks provided a tailored user experience, facilitating seamless discovery and organic exploration of everything Wellington has to offer.

A straightforward navigation system and flexible content structure supports short-form editorial content, in turn promoting more events, entertainment, and local businesses to inspire visitation and stimulate economic activity.

The platform aimed to amplify Wellington's creative status through vibrant, inclusive design elements like automated color transitions and subtle animations, keeping content fresh and engaging, and creating organic moments of surprise and delight.

Centralising digital assets enhanced content coherency and design consistency, streamlining digital asset management and operational efficiency.
Integrating enhanced mapping services and an intuitive events calendar simplified travel planning and enriched the user experience, catering to both casual visitors and those that know the region well.

The platform supported local businesses by enhancing storytelling capabilities, attracting investment, hosting events, and promoting regional opportunities.

With more than 2 million unique users in the first year, the new WellingtonNZ site achieved significant growth. It saw a 100% surge in session times, indicating stronger engagement across all content, a 27% increase in visitor growth, and a notable rise in event ticket conversions — all stimulating the economy. The platform maintained its top search engine ranking, reduced technical maintenance costs by over 50%, and earned global recognition as a Webby Award Nominee in the Travel & Lifestyle category.