Top Takeaways from the Great Barrier Reef Tourism Industry Forum
Posted on March 8th, 2016
Earlier this month tourism industry bodies and local providers from the Southern Great Barrier Reef region met at the Gladstone Entertainment Centre for an afternoon forum on the focus and direction of Great Barrier Reef Tourism.
Tourism Australia’s $40 million multi-platform marketing campaign is rolling out in early 2016, with a range of new ‘There’s nothing like Australia’ campaign assets being developed highlighting examples of what is unique about our country’s aquatic and coastal offerings.
With the many iconic coastal and aquatic experiences that the Southern Great Barrier Reef destination offers, this Forum provided information on what is being planned and how our region’s tourism businesses can get involved. Below are some of the exciting developments and key takeaways from the event.
TOURISM AUSTRALIA
Tourism Australia is developing a campaign to tell the story about Australia’s diverse and unique aquatic and coastal assets. The goal of the campaign is to help drive a total leisure spend uplift of 10% by December 2016.
Take advantage of the wealth of knowledge available on Tourism Australia’s corporate website. The site offers up-to-date industry information, industry advice and marketing opportunities, plus there is a video and image library that you can utilise to help you promote your region of Australia for free!
Aussie Specialists is a program designed to educate and motivate frontline travel sellers to increase sales for Australia. You can get involved by encouraging Aussie Specialists to experience your product first-hand, plus load your international industry/agent rates on to the website. If you’re yet to be involved with Travel Trade, and would like to learn more, contact Capricorn Enterprise.
TOURISM AUSTRALIA – SOCIAL MEDIA
YOU can be a part of the Australia.com social channels! Remember to tag #SeeAustralia on Instagram, @Australia on Twitter or post your videos and photos on their Facebook wall to share your content. Don’t forget to utilise the Southern Great Barrier Reef, and Capricorn social channels too! @SouthernGreatBarrierReef #SouthernGreatBarrierReef @VisitCapricorn #VisitCapricorn.
How do you get shared on their social media channels? Aim for your content to be inspiring, engaging, spectacular, funny or eye-catching and not too commercial. Don’t forget to include all the information about the post in the caption (where, when, how to get there, unique story) to help make it a more personal experience for the fans. Check out Australia.com’s social channels for inspiration!
Get onto video! The power of video on social media continues to rise, and Tourism Australia find that short, engaging videos perform exceptionally well on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The good news is that you don’t need all of the latest high tech equipment to capture great content, some of their most popular posts have been simple and unedited short clips that were filmed on a phone! And don’t forget Go Pro video is excellent too!
Your website homepage is your most valuable digital real estate. Keep it looking up-to-date and fresh by incorporating short videos and user generated images that gives potential customers an insight into what your product experience will really be like.
TOURISM & EVENTS QUEENSLAND
TEQ Great Barrier Reef marketing goal: ‘To be recognised as the World’s Greatest Natural Wonder delivering the World’s Greatest Nature Experiences’
Did you know that in the Southern Great Barrier Reef region 93.2% of visitors are domestic, 87% of which are intrastate visitors – mainly from Brisbane and from within SGBR region. (source: TEQ SGBR visitation year end Sept 2016 graph)
The Southern Great Barrier Reef (SGBR) marketing strategy will continue to leverage the consumer’s interest in the Great Barrier Reef with a focus on domestic marketing and the growth opportunities internationally.
What you can do to help:
- Consistently deliver the best possible visitor experience.
- Use brand SBGR messaging and imagery in your collateral.
- Keep in contact with TEQ and Capricorn Enterprise, let us know what you have on offer and see how you can leverage destination marketing activity.
- Remember to use the hashtag #southerngreatbarrierreef
QUEENSLAND PARKS & WILDLIFE SERVICES
“Healthy reef equals a healthy industry” QPWS is focusing on conservation and research while supporting industry with significant visitor infrastructure. Recent advancements include:
- Improvements to moorings, roads, walking tracks and lookouts.
- Net-free fishing zones for Central and North Queensland – benefits tourism and recreational fishing.
- Change from operator limit on island to carrying capacity of tourists, resulting in new operation opportunities.
