About Unique Stays & Experiences

Background

Unique Stays & Experiences is a privately-owned New Zealand company, spearheaded by travel and tourism expert Louise Frend. The company offers a cost-effective, honest and personalised marketing solution, showcasing exceptional New Zealand Tourism products.

Unique Stays & Experiences has been operating since 2007, and is well recognised and respected for providing a sales and marketing service to boutique tourism products. We are here to help you navigate the travel industry and take care of your travel industry sales and marketing requirements.

We understand through experience that many independently-owned New Zealand tourism products can struggle to get noticed with the international trade. Even owners of the most outstanding product can find it difficult to get cut-through with travel industry wholesalers and inbound operators.

Often, the international trade cannot make time to meet with and understand the offering of the small operator, and this is where the Unique Stays & Experience team comes in. There is a significant appetite within the industry to work with owner-operated Kiwi tourism businesses with definitive points of difference, providing New Zealand visitors with a memorable and fulfilling experience. Unique Stays & Experiences specialises in this area, helping to bridge this communication gap, and assisting our partners to deliver significant levels of business.

The Unique Stays & Experience team provides support to complementary tourism products, giving them a platform to work together under a common banner to grow sales and profile. The Unique Stays & Experiences website works as a resource for Trade to download images and brochure copy.

Louise has worked in national and international tourism & marketing roles for over 25 years. She has working relationships with Tourism New Zealand, TIA and the RTOs in the country, the NZ inbound and wholesale operators and international trade partners in the key markets for New Zealand.

Unique Stays & Experiences now successfully represents multiple individual Tourism operators. Louise and her UK-based sales team take immense pleasure in assisting with the growth in visitor numbers to these businesses from the New Zealand and International travel industry.

What We Do

Unique Stays & Experiences takes care of your travel industry sales and marketing both internationally and in New Zealand.

Where it is difficult, if not impossible, for each product to work on this individually, Unique Stays & Experiences works to bring together a non-competing group and complementary selection of partners under the Unique Stays & Experiences brand. This allows us to co-operatively promote a group of high-quality tourism operators that together provide the consumer with an outstanding stay and a truly Kiwi experience on their visit to New Zealand.

Unique Stays & Experiences provides clients with a complete sales and marketing solution at a realistic and affordable price, through consumer direct and travel industry sales and marketing activities. Meeting with you regularly gives us real insight into your tour or product, best enabling us to provide advice on strategies that will provide success and growth. With our help and passion for what we do, you can be assured of consistent support and service.

The team at Unique Stays & Experiences prides itself on strong relationships with our clients. Louise believes that a professional friendship based on trust often develops, creating lasting successful, friendly and personal relationships.

Each member of the Unique Stays & Experiences team has extensive experience in sales and marketing roles within the tourism sector and a thorough understanding of the travel industry. We use our expertise to ensure that your product is getting the full representation it needs, both domestically and internationally.

We exist to ensure that New Zealand’s fantastic high quality, luxury, boutique and truly unique accommodation and key tourism experiences get marketed to the two main channels that can deliver you business – the travel trade and the consumer directly. We do this by building strong and trusting relationships between product and buyers, frontline sellers and the consumer.

We work with you to guarantee that your experience is well presented to the travel industry. Louise puts together an annual plan that is personally customised for each client, focusing on the growth of the business, primarily through trade channels. Both directly and through her team, Louise can also provide advice and assistance on all elements of marketing strategy for your business. We can also assist you in outsourcing elements such as social media, web builds, video and photography and much more.

Unique Stays & Experiences has capcity for further clients – so if you have an interest in discussing your requirements please drop Louise an email and she will gladly give you a call at your convenience.

Meet the Team

Louise Frend

Following 30 plus years of working in Hospitality, marketing and tourism, and six years working for Tourism Western Australia, company director Louise Frend established Frend Consulting. This combined her own skills with those of the amazing talented people she has worked alongside over her time in New Zealand. Louise and her partner Jeff bought Unique Stays and Experiences in January 2017, thereby fulfilling a dream of managing a suite of luxury and boutique accommodation and bespoke tourism experiences.

During her extensive career in the tourism industry she has built up an enviable experience in tourism destination marketing, product development and campaign management.

Louise worked in her youth in hospitality all around the world, quickly gaining experience in a variety of management roles whilst living in Western Australia. Based in Broome, she traveled Australia extensively promoting the Kimberley and Luxury Coastal Cruises, and studied at Notre Dame University. Whilst spending a year living and working in Fiji as marketing manager for a resort, she met her partner Jeff and moved to New Zealand in 2005.

Louise has provided a range of sales management, and tourism services for various clients, and has a wide and significant set of skills and a broad and influential network. She also enjoys excellent relationships in the industry. A natural leader with strong communication and management skills it was time for her to take Unique Stays and Experiences to the next level and is supported in this by Kerryn the previous owner and Ali Hampton in the UK. As a team, we assure trade and clients alike of our continued dedication to your business.

You can contact Louise directly:

Phone: +64 (0) 21 278 9952
Email: louise@uniquestays.co.nz

Richard Howarth

Richard is our UK based marketing manager and is responsible for visiting our key UK partners, attending roadshows and tourism training events. He also takes care of product updates, networking and identifying new opportunities as they arise. Richard proactively sells theUnique Stays and Experiences products, destinations and tours on a regular basis.

Richard has worked in the tourism Industry for over 30 years as a retailer and wholesaler and as a market supplier.

His long tourism career has included key travel organisations such as Trailfinders, AAT Kings and dnata (Travel 2, Travelbag/Gold Medal). As a result, he has an extensive network in both the UK and Northern Europe and is highly regarded and respected.

As an important addition to the UK Richard will develop a strategy for marketing activity & sales calls in Germany and Northern European countries, continuing to work alongside TNZ in their key activities in 2018 and beyond.

Richard is an excellent strategic marketer with a genuine passion for working with our great and growing portfolio of New Zealand product.

“I am really pleased to be representing such an amazing collection of properties and experiences in some of the most beautiful parts of New Zealand. Showing the images and telling the stories of each one to our agent partners, you can see their eyes light up as they transport themselves on a wonderful trip to New Zealand.”

Jeff Tieman

Jeff is Louise’s partner of eighteen years and co Director of Unique Stays & Experiences. Jeff oversees all the “Bean-counting”, budgeting, invoicing and book balancing tasks. Essentially he does all the elements of running a business that Louise finds a little dull!! He is not all that keen on the Marketing side so together they are a great team. Jeff has 28 years of Business and Financial Management experience and a strong accounting background. He completed his Bachelor of Business back in 2014, and back in 2017 he became a fully-fledged Chartered Accountant. He keeps the books straight! His advice is also invaluable as he is a sponge for current affairs, business news and trends. A big brain with a big heart and the best sounding board in the world.