AUCKLAND, New Zealand, July 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — 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.