Tourism Australia has seen a late surge in the number of entries on its 'Nothing Like Australia' website during the last 24 hours of the competition.

“I think it is safe to say we got 30,000 entries, which is quite something, when we thought originally 10,000 to15,000 would be good,” Tourism Australia managing director, Andrew McEvoy, said, “We are still finalising the numbers,”.  

Tourism Australia launched the website and competition, calling on Australia’s best holiday snaps, in mid April as part of a new brand campaign, There’s Nothing Like Australia.   “Australians have really got behind this first stage of the campaign, so apart from helping us invite the world to our place, a lot of Australians have had a look online, and fallen in love with their own country again, so it should be good for domestic travel as well.”

In fact, the website has had more than 100,000 unique visitors in the past 26 days, staying on average more than 10 minutes. Businesses and state tourism organisations are also using the site to promote their own region or brand. McEvoy said, “The industry has been fantastic, from the Tourism and Transport Forum, Australian Tourism Export Council, Australian Federations of Travel Agents, everyone has said that this is a great line for Australia.”

Given the success, TA is now looking at doing this on an annual basis, and possibly rolling it out globally.  “We could do a Nothing Like Australia photo campaign in individual markets such as Singapore, Germany or New Zealand.”  

The second stage of the campaign will be launched at the Australian Tourism Exchange in Adelaide later this month, with the state winners of the photo competition to be announced on June 23. 

The public will then be invited to vote on which of the finalist photos should win the major prize of a $25,000 holiday, to be announced on June 30.