Experience the magic of New Zealand.

A new website makes researching, planning and booking a trip across the Tasman as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Fancy a trip across the ditch for a spot of skiing in Queenstown, whale watching in Kaikoura or fishing in Taupo? Or do you want to tackle one of New Zealand’s famous scenic walks, such as the Milford or Tasman tracks? Where are the best places to go if you want to bungy jump, play golf, go white water rafting, or take a wine tour?

New Zealand invariably rates as a top destination for Australian travellers and while the dazzling variety of its mountain to surf attractions adds to its appeal and mystique as a destination, the sheer wealth of attractions can make it difficult and often confusing for the enthusiastic traveller to plan their holiday itinerary.

However, help is just a click away with the launch of http://www.cadabra.com/, the first comprehensive online tour planning system to help tourists research, plan and book their own itinerary in New Zealand.

Cadabra is a new venture launched by successful New Zealand technology entrepreneur, Graeme Frost. After two decades of experience in the software industry, the idea for Cadabra came to Frost after a chance encounter with an American couple on a 10-day tour of New Zealand’s luxury lodges. The couple had researched and booked different sectors of their trip over the Internet from their New York home, but their dream vacation turned into a logistical nightmare.

They had used a dozen different websites to research and book parts of their holiday, but their dream trip didn’t quite go to plan when they hit the ground.

Says Frost: “When they are planning their New Zealand holiday, most Australians have heard about the top destinations, but they are not always aware of the distances between them, or the best way to travel around them.”

Cadabra is a partnership with ANZCRO, the largest inbound tour operators to New Zealand. The site offers online users direct access to more than 1000 accommodation options and 3000 tourism service suppliers. In addition to enabling online booking, Cadabra provides advice from local travel experts, travellers’ tips and ratings, and also Qualmark ratings (the official New Zealand tourism ratings system).

The service offered by Cadabra is best described as a comprehensive online tour planning solution. It allows travellers to interactively build complex tour itineraries for their travel around New Zealand. These personalised travel plans can be multi destinational with as many days, stops, and activities as desired.

The site can also handle split itineraries – for instance, one person can go fly-fishing in New Zealand’s bountiful rivers, while another treats themselves to a day in a luxury heath spa, before meeting up again and heading out for dinner in one of New Zealand’s many world-class restaurants.

The website is invaluable even for travellers who are quite familiar with the country, as it offers the Cadabra Itinerary Wizard. Cadabra builds a selection of itineraries based on the traveller’s preferences such as length of stay, grade of hotel, places they know they want to visit, and the experiences and activities they are interested in. Once a recommended itinerary has been built, Cadabra then allows the user to modify it in any way they wish to plan their own “perfect holiday.”

Cadabra is aiming to attract what is known in the travel industry as FIT travel – Fully Independent Touring – one of the largest growing sectors of the tourism market, since the traditional packaged tour started to lose its lustre and appeal.

However, says Mr Frost, the challenge presented by this complex, personalised touring is the burden of planning which falls on the traveller. There was previously no online solution which offers the personalised tour traveller a single full-service website where they can research, plan and book their tour around New Zealand.

The current major players in the market such as Zuji, Expedia, Travelocity, and Lastminute are designed mainly for booking flights and hotels. These sites allow travellers to book to a single location, or two at a maximum and then return home. They do not cater for travel inside a country, including multiple destinations, multiple travel modes, and leisure/activity options in each location: this travel is categorised as complex touring by the travel industry.

Graeme Frost expects that initial users of Cadabra will be tourist travellers who are already using the Internet to book travel and he appreciates that Cadabra is a niche product, but it is a rapidly growing niche. Tourism New Zealand research shows that 57% of “interactive travellers” discovered New Zealand online, with other international research predicting that the online travel market will increase to nearly 40 per cent of the total travel market by 2011.

Graeme Frost says Cadabra also recognises that travellers enjoy researching and planning their own trips (remember poring over glossy travel brochures?), so the website has been designed to be as attractive and inviting as possible and allows the traveller to experience some of the sights and sounds of their chosen destinations around New Zealand while tucked behind their desks.

But don’t just take our word for it – visit: http://www.cadabra.com/ The experience is almost as good as being there.

A report by The Mole