Rotorua · Bay of Plenty · Te Arawa
Custom software & business-aware websites for Rotorua businesses.
Rotorua's district GDP hit roughly $4.86 billion in 2024, driven by four unusually concentrated pillars — forestry and wood processing, tourism, health care and a large Te Arawa Māori economy — and the city is genuinely turning a corner, with commercial guest nights up 8.7% and residential consents up 40% against a national decline. Its web market, though, is dominated by WordPress template and marketing-first shops that make a prettier brochure site and stop there. Tally Digital builds the layer they can't: custom web apps, real booking and payment integrations, connected back-office systems and shipped AI — hand-coded by one senior New Zealand engineer. If you're a forestry firm running spreadsheet workflows, a tourism operator losing margin to OTAs, or a clinic stuck with a dated portal, that's the work: connect the systems, automate the busywork, and make you AI-ready.
NZ-based · NZD · GST-registered · you own the code
Who it’s for
Built for the businesses that run Rotorua.
Forestry & wood processing
Rotorua's highest-value cluster — Red Stag Timber's Waipā Mill, Kaingaroa Timberlands and the new ~$40M processing plant, plus their forestry contractors and transport firms — runs manual and spreadsheet workflows crying out for internal tools, log and inventory tracking, ERP and Xero/MYOB integrations, and AI for spec and document processing.
Tourism, attractions & experience operators
With 3M+ annual visitors, operators like Skyline Rotorua, Polynesian Spa, Te Puia, Agrodome and the Redwoods MTB scene need custom booking and ticketing systems, e-commerce, OTA and payment integrations, CRM automation and AI concierge tools — high-value work well beyond a template site that reclaims margin lost to third-party channels.
Māori economy — iwi commercial & land trusts
Te Arawa entities — Te Arawa Group Holdings, Ngāti Whakaue Assets, Te Arawa Lakes Trust (now owner of Rotorua Duck Tours) and Kākano Investment — manage large tourism, forestry and geothermal portfolios and value long-term partners over cheap vendors, needing reporting portals, beneficiary platforms and bespoke web apps.
Health, aged care & clinics
An over-indexed, recession-resistant sector at 9.1% of district GDP — Rotorua's retirement villages, private medical, dental and physio clinics — carries clear digital gaps: booking and patient portals, practice-management and payment integrations, and accessibility-compliant sites, all reliable custom-software work.
Professional & property services
With consents up 40%, Rotorua's accountants, law firms and real-estate agencies are riding the surge but running dated stacks. They need Xero and MYOB integrations, client and property portals, workflow automation and modern, structured-data-ready sites that connect to the tools they already run.
Retail & Shopify commerce
Rotorua CBD regeneration is a stated council focus, and local retailers and iwi-owned brands selling geothermal, timber and cultural products need proper e-commerce — Shopify builds, custom apps and integrations that sync inventory, payments and accounting rather than a storefront left to age.
What we solve
The problems that cost you the most are the ones a template can’t reach.
Dated template sites left to age
Many Rotorua SMBs sit on WordPress or template sites built years ago by local shops and never revisited — no structured data, weak local SEO, and no path to the custom features a forestry, tourism or health business actually needs today.
No real online booking or e-commerce
Tourism operators lean almost entirely on OTAs and lose margin on every sale, while retailers have no proper storefront. There's rarely a native booking, ticketing or e-commerce layer that takes direct payments and syncs to the back office.
Zero back-office integration
Forestry and industrial firms run manual and spreadsheet workflows; clinics and professional-services firms have accounting, inventory, CRM and payment systems that don't talk to each other. Nobody local is connecting them or automating the busywork between them.
Effectively zero AI adoption
AI readiness in Rotorua is close to nonexistent. Operators aren't using AI for concierge and FAQ, forestry firms aren't using it for document and spec processing, and no local competitor genuinely owns the connect-and-automate-and-make-you-AI-ready lane.
The difference
You talk to the person who writes the code.
Most local options are marketing agencies that outsource the build, or template resellers who hand you a page and disappear after the invoice. Neither can build the software layer a growing Rotorua business actually needs.
Tally Digital is a single senior engineer. Every project is hand-coded on a modern stack, every integration is real, and the code is yours to keep. No junior hand-off, no page-builder lock-in, no “who supports this now?”.
- Custom software, not templates
- Real API & booking integrations
- Modern stack — Next.js, Sanity, Supabase, Shopify
- You own the code and the accounts
What we build
Websites that do a job — plus the software behind them.
Proof
Real software, shipped for New Zealand businesses.
Inventory platforms, member portals and custom builds for NZ clients — the same senior engineering that goes into every Rotorua project.
How it works
A clear path from brief to launch.
Brief
We map the real problem and how your systems work today — not just a page count.
Architect
A plan you can read: what gets built, which integrations, what you own at the end.
Build
Hand-coded on a modern stack (Next.js, Sanity, Supabase, Shopify) — no page-builder debt.
Launch & support
Shipped, documented and handed over. You talk to the person who wrote the code.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
- Do you work with Rotorua and wider Bay of Plenty businesses?
- Yes. Tally Digital is a New Zealand software studio and works with Rotorua and Bay of Plenty businesses remotely and on-site as needed. The process is the same wherever you are: a clear scope, direct communication with the engineer who writes the code, and software you own outright — no account managers or template shortcuts in between.
- Can you build a booking system for my Rotorua tourism business?
- Yes — this is core work. I build custom booking and ticketing systems with direct payment, channel and OTA integrations, CRM and email automation, and AI concierge or FAQ tools. The goal is to take bookings directly, reclaim the margin OTAs skim, and connect it all to the systems you already run rather than bolting on another template.
- Can you connect my website to Xero or MYOB?
- Yes. Accounting, ERP, inventory, CRM and payment integrations are a big part of what I do — especially for Rotorua's forestry, health and professional-services firms. Instead of manual re-keying between systems, I build the API integrations that sync your website, back office and accounting so the busywork runs itself.
- What's the difference between a web designer and a web developer?
- A designer makes a site look good; a developer makes software work. Rotorua has plenty of design and marketing shops for a brochure site. I'm a senior engineer who builds the harder layer — custom web apps, system integrations, booking engines and shipped AI — the functional software those shops typically can't build.
- Do I need a custom app or off-the-shelf software?
- Often off-the-shelf is the right call, and I'll tell you when it is. Custom pays off when your workflow is specific enough that SaaS forces awkward compromises or endless per-seat fees, or when you need systems integrated in a way no product does. We scope it honestly before any code is written.
Tell me what your business has outgrown.
Tell me the bottleneck holding your Rotorua or Bay of Plenty business back — the OTA margin leak, the spreadsheet workflow, the systems that won't talk. You'll get a clear plan and a fixed price from the engineer who'll actually build it.