Weta Wheels!

Weta Workshop - home of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit - have just taken on their very own fleet of Micro scooters and named it 'Weta Wheels' (naturally!)

We asked them a few questions about the fleet, and this is what they had to say:

Why did you decide to get a fleet of scooters?

Weta Workshop is split over several buildings on the Miramar Peninsula. The Workshop itself is the main hub, on Weka Street, where we run our Weta Cave tour. 5-10 minutes’ walk down Park Road lies another, larger, tour space, and with our Thunderbirds Are Go Behind-the-Scenes Experience starting up in late 2015, this took our total number of tour spaces to three. That meant the tour crew were needing to ferry themselves between three separate buildings on a daily basis.

Add in the often unpredictable Wellington weather to the mix – which even in summer can oscillate between gale force winds, pouring rain, and blazing hot sun – and Weta Workshop Co-founder Tania Rodger rightfully felt that there was a more efficient, and more enjoyable, way for our hard-working tour guides to get from space to space with ease.

So, how are you using them?

Our Weta Wheels are primarily used by our Tourism department, especially our tour guides, as they usually have the most short-distance travelling to do. The tour guides use the scooters to get between our three tour spaces, which are often booked out with back-to-back tours. You will also find our Tourism Operations Manager taking one out for a spin, as well as our Warehouse crew (who work out of Weta Workshop’s warehouse on Park Road), retail crew and other crew for various miscellaneous meetings, errands and activities.

Are they getting lots of use and are you having fun with them?

Our tour guides use the Weta Wheels every day to varying degrees. Often the entire fleet will be in use, especially in the high season. Our tour crew, who are a mix of different ages, sizes, heights and genders, reckon the scooters are super easy to use regardless of ‘skill’ level. They’re finding it a breeze to get to their next tour or transport something from one building to another. On a personal level they are just having a blast riding them. It doesn’t really feel like work when you get to ride a scooter, even though it’s all part of the job now!

What has changed since you got the fleet?

The main thing that has changed is the overall satisfaction of the tour guide crew. Since the scooters take the effort out of moving between spaces, and help to ensure that they arrive to their destination on time, our tour guides now have more time to spend on preparation and can start their tours on a high note. That, in turn, makes for a more enjoyable experience for the tour-goers, too. More broadly speaking, as a department it’s nice to know that we can hop on a scooter to run an errand without jumping into a car or wasting time on a long walk up the road.

Overall, our little fleet of micro scooters impart a general feel-good experience, which has flow-on effects for the rest of the business.

How do they fit into Weta’s future sustainability vision?

With upwards of several hundred crew members, we at Weta Workshop are constantly looking for ways to reduce our carbon footprint, and with such a large team, we know that every little bit helps.

Our Weta Wheels fit into that ‘green’ vision and go a little way to making sure we’re not just talking the talk, but walking the walk (so to speak).

The lovely people at Weta Workshop wrote a blog about their Weta Wheels. If you would like to speak with us about a fleet of scooters for your workspace, email us!