Wednesday 16 March 2011

The following is an official release from Tourism Queensland's boss, Anthony Hayes. We would love to hear your thoughts on the actions taking place to help the tourism industry get back on its feet.


'Nothing Beats Queensland, Where Australia Shines' demonstrates the resilience and shining spirit of the Queensland tourism industry. I couldn’t be more proud of the recovery campaign tag line, knowing where the inspiration was drawn from – which is the Queensland tourism industry.

(Last week) Premier Anna Bligh, Tourism Minister Jan Jarratt and Acting Prime Minister Wayne Swan announced details of the $10 million recovery marketing plan we’ve been working on in recent weeks with Tourism Australia. It's quite a detailed plan encompassing several important initiatives. I think it’s important for me to explain the logic behind our plan and what you, the tourism industry can expect to see from us at TQ in the coming weeks and months.

As you all know, and at the risk of stating the obvious, things right now are dire. Terribly dire. Whether or not your business was directly affected by the floods or the cyclone, you have no doubt seen a drop in bookings since Christmas. Evidence suggests that a worrying number of Australians are currently of the opinion that Queensland has been so extensively damaged that they will not even consider having a holiday here in the short term.

Normally when things go wrong, such as in the aftermath of swine flu, the oil spill and the GFC, TQ goes on the front foot with a massive focus on retail sales activity. We work with RTOs, airlines, hotels, travel chains and all of our Queensland industry partners to drum up immediate sales and get things moving again. But in those past instances consumers weren't sitting at home thinking all of Queensland was a disaster zone. This time the problem is bigger than all of the challenges we've experienced in the recent past.

To put it bluntly, running a massive retail sale right now will not fix our problems. We need to fix the perception problem first. We need to undo the damage done by several months of comprehensive, negative media coverage about the disasters. We need to reintroduce Queensland to the Australian market, get them thinking positively about us again, and then hit them between the eyes with a brilliant sales message.

So that's the plan. We are going to spend a significant amount of the $10 million - $5.5 million in fact - on re-establishing Queensland in the eyes of Australians. We need to get Australians thinking about coming back to Queensland, and we need to get Queenslanders thinking about holidaying at home to support their mates in the local tourism industry.

The plan is to work with all of our fantastic media partners in television, radio newspapers, magazines and online, to show Australia that 'Nothing Beats Queensland'. Over the next two or three months we want to plaster Australia with positive stories about our fantastic destinations and experiences. It will take time to reverse the negative perceptions, but we can do it.

And of course there will be a strong sales component wrapped into our plan. We have been working with all of our major partners to devise this plan. They will focus on selling their products in partnership with our media buy, while we focus on the good news stories. And of course we will continue to roll out our normal sales campaigns as originally planned.

Is this a better plan of attack than simply investing the money into more of our normal sales activities? I believe so. We have thought this strategy through very carefully. It has been discussed with the TQ board, and it has been developed in close partnership with Tourism Australia and several others. The Premier and our new Minister have been incredibly supportive of this new approach.

So that's the plan for the interstate, intrastate and New Zealand markets. TV shows, radio shows, newspaper promotions and editorials, magazines, online promotions... any way we can tell a new and positive story about Queensland, we'll do it. And then we'll work with our partners to drive the sales via their own distribution systems.

In other key markets, where we do not believe the damage to our brand is as significant, we will stay closer to our normal sales formula and work with our partners to address the issue of soft forward bookings. In Japan, China and the UK, and in focusing on the backpacker/youth market, we will work with airlines and wholesalers to drive short term sales.

On top of this, we will also spend $700,000 in global publicity. We will bring international, national and Queensland journalists to every single tourism region of the state to show them, in real time, exactly how Queensland is looking right now. News journos, lifestyle journos, travel trade journos, bloggers ... anyone who can help us get the message out there.

And there's more. Last week the Premier and Minister announced an additional $2 million from the state and federal governments for industry support in several forms. We will be providing financial support for operators to join ATDW. We will be providing assistance for tourism businesses to attend trade shows to promote Queensland, with more details to be released soon. We’re working on details for a tourism roadshow that will enable Queensland tourism operators to travel interstate and promote the region - telling potential visitors and travel trade operators in person that they are open and ready to welcome holiday makers. We will be working through the details of this with your regional tourism organisations over the next few weeks.

As I hope you’ll appreciate, there is an enormous amount of activity about to take place. Everyone here at TQ is excited and I can vouch that they are a passionate lot who genuinely love and live what they do.

I can't promise this recovery campaign will fix everything in the immediate term because the challenge ahead of us is massive. But we need to start again by reintroducing ourselves to our customers. Some of our industry colleagues will take a long time to get back on their feet after suffering terrible physical damage, and we will need to work with them separately when the time is right, but for most of us the problem right now is one of perception.

More details will follow in the days to come, but I hope you will agree that we are starting in the right place. 'Nothing Beats Queensland', we all know that. We just need to remind our customers that Queensland really is 'Where Australia shines'.

Thanks for reading.
Ant