• Our Story & Values
• Sport Bay of Plenty Staff
• CoachForce Staff
• Our Board
• Employment
• Organisational Documents
  • Insights & Data
  • Annual Reports
    • Annual Report 2022-23
    • Annual Report 2021-22
    • Annual Report 2020-21
    • Annual Report 2019-20
    • Annual Report 2017-2018
    • Annual Report 2018-2019
  • Maori Strategy
  • Child Protection
  • Strategic Plan

Virtually on Track encourages people to get outdoors and explore the stunning parks, beaches and reserves in the Bay of Plenty through running, walking or other recreational sport.

What’s New

• During the school holiday periods there was a focus on promotions to attract families to enjoy the Gems together. We have trialled some new technologies, such as the Magisto app, as well as getting back to basics and providing fun clues for hunts on the Gem sites. The Scavenger Hunts have been our most successful promotion.
• During the Scavenger Hunt promotions, over 3000 visits have been made to the Virtually on Track website, proving a popular site to find useful information about activities during the school holidays.

Success Stories

Scavenger Hunt

The Scavenger Hunt in the April school holidays gathered momentum quickly. 706 people took part in these activities during this two-week period including family groups involving parents or grandparents along with the children.
The hunts were set up on six of the Gem sites – in the Western Bay there was TECT All Terrain Park and McLaren Falls. The other sites were Hukutaia Domain in Opotiki, Fairbrother Loop in Whakatane, Blue Lake and Boyes Beach Reserve in Rotorua.
The feedback from the families has been fantastic as it is a mix of fun, activity and conservation awareness. The development of these Scavenger Hunts has resulted in a permanent activity that can be enjoyed at any time available via the Scavenger Hunt webpage on the Virtually on Track website.

“I couldn’t rave enough about it. Our family loved it and did all six scavenger hunts. The boys had so much fun learning about the different areas, very historical through the Hukutaia Domain and loved learning about the kiwi’s in the Fairbrother Loop. A great mix of walks and so enjoyed the experience in the other areas too. Our family hadn’t done any of these walks before so it was a fantastic experience for all of us. We are definitely looking forward to more scavenger hunts in the future. Thank you for organising such a wonderful activity.”

"What a great idea! I took my 5 year old boy and 6 year old girl to do this on Tuesday and we had great fun! Was a great incentive to get out and about and nice seeing lots of other children running about as well. Maia was extremely eager to find everything herself and she did a fantastic job! Lachie was more into checking out sticks, leaves, the fantail in one of the photos, and bugs.”

Colour Quest

For the term two holidays, the theme was to offer an activity that could be undertaken on any and/or all Gem sites and that included links to conservation and Te Reo Maori.
The resulting activity was named ‘Colour Quest’ – an interactive social media photo challenge that showcased all the colours of the region’s outdoor recreational sites and was a fun way to learn about the cultural and conservational aspects of the Bay of Plenty. Colour Quest was visually represented by a Koru. To play Colour Quest participants were required to visit a Gem site, track down flora, fauna, items and objects in and around the site that represent each of the eight colours in the Koru, take photos of all eight colours and upload their images to Instagram using a collage app with the hashtag #VOTBOP

The Colour Quest activity was actively promoted in the lead up to and during the school holiday period of July 8-23, 2017.
The development of Colour Quest has resulted in an activity that can be undertaken at any time on any Gem site. For this reason, the Colour Quest webpage remains on the Virtually on Track website available to download from the page or in hard copy.

Goosechase

Goosechase is an amazing race-style app where you can create unique games via a range of missions. Teams then sign up to the game using their smartphone and complete missions to collect points whilst competing against other teams for the top score. 71 teams took part in the Goosechase activities in October. These were held in Ohope Beach, the Redwoods in Rotorua and at Waihi Beach.

Click here to find out more about Virtually on Track