Fact finding Holidays?

[Finbar]

We are planning on coming out soon to have a look around. We want to do it in an NZ winter to see the place at it's coldest and hopefully get a few days skiing in??? (and it's cheaper!) I came across this service and wanted to know if anyone has used them? Does anybody else offer a similiar package?

MoveOver

Cheers

[Taffy]

Hi,

I've not used them (or heard of them before!). Are you going to Cantebury? It looks like thats the only area they really specialise in. Be interesting to know what they charge for their service.

[moggy]

I've not used them.
I can't see any indication of prices, but tbh there is nothing in their package that you can't easily organise yourself via the net

Property tour with estate agent

Pop into any estate agent, tell them you have just moved over (OK white lie) and you are interested in properties in the X price bracket - they will fall over themselves and will discuss you needs, eg schooling etc in great detail and for free

Detailed holiday itinerary
Advice and arrangements of holiday activities

Buy the rough guide to New Zealand of pick any of the tours that are advertised by various companies on the net and use their itineraries, which they also publicise for free

Arranging meeting with HR managers, industry specialists and recruitment consultants

Find out where the agencies are in the towns you want to visit (use yellow pages online) prepare your CV, email them and say you are coming over and wish to meet. If necessary pretend you have residency if you haven't already got it as very few employers are interested if you haven't. I would be very surprsed if it was much more than them arranging a meeting with Manpower or the like.

Meeting with visa consultant

Who will then charge you stupid amounts of money to handle your application when all the information is available from the official NZ imigration website and from forums like this one

Meetings with estate agents and recruitment consultants

Recruitment consultants already mentioned above, as is estate agents

Airport meet and greet

A nice to have, but if you are hiring a camper van for your holiday like most people do you would be greeted and collected by the campervan company anyway

Accommodation arrangements (tailored to your budget)

How much help do you need in booking a camper van? Or a hotel?

Travel and transport arrangements

Not exactly difficult to hire a car or campervan over the web these days

Fact-sheets for all the areas you are visiting

Pop into an tourist information place and they are available free of charge, you can also talk to an expert there. Or as mentioned before buy the rough guide to NZ

New Zealand orientation talk with Q&A session

Might be worth something, depends what level they will go into, but again you can get answers to all your questions from forums like these, from people who have already emigrated and know what the day to day living is like.

Sorry to be a bit down on the company, but I would save your pennies and just do it yourself, they are not offering anything that is difficult to organise, or of great value in having, unless you are the sort of person who has only ever gone on a package holiday and are terrified of going on holiday without a butlins red coat to tell you when to go to the loo.

One of the joys of visiting NZ is that there is the freedom to do what you want to do. Some of the best things we saw were things that we stumbled accross and because we weren't tied into a strict schedule we could take the time to stop.

[LilAmy]

Hi Welcome to the forum!

I agree with Moggy there is so much you can do and organise from home before you come across and then you can do your own fact finding mission without shelling out lots of cash.

It's amazing once you're here on holiday how friendly the locals are and they're one of the best people to natter to, to find out things about NZ.

As Moggy said there's a lot of us on this forum dotted across both islands who'll be more than happy to help answer questions and help you organise a fact finding trip if you need to.

Good luck with things

[MotherBear]

Hi Finbar ,

Welcome to the forum from me, too. Hope you're finding it interesting reading and, if we can be of assistance in any way, just ask away. We're happy to help.

[Finbar]

Thanks for the welcome MB. I was thinking similiar to you Moggy that I could organise a lot of it myself. The appealling aspect for me was saving the time by having somebody do it all for me! I have started to look into researching which companies I should approach when I go over and I'm finding that I am spending hours in front of the computer. I suppose it depends how much they are going to charge for their services - might drop them an email. Since we are only going to go over for 3 weeks it would be good to make sure we get the most out of it. These forums are great but it's scarey how much time I'm spending reading all these threads....good place to go when I'm having sleepless nights though. Thanks again for your comments. So is the North or South Isaland best for skiing???

[moggy]

tbh, I wouldn't waste your time trying to find companies to approach, very very few will give you the time of day until you have your residency sorted. Also it is not the done thing here for companies to give out information regarding salary packages. Very few companies will give a job offer till you are actually over here yes I know some people get them, but unless you are in the medical professions or teaching, unlikely to happen
You best bet is to arrange an interview with an agency, they will give you a much better idea of what the market is like.
Save your time.

Organising all the services that that company offers will probably take you at the most a day to do yourself. (with the exception of filling out your EOI, which even if you use a consultant you will still have to do all the work for that yourself anyway)