Australia is on most-people’s bucket lists. With-its-fascinating wildlife, stunning-and-diverse-natural scenery-and warm, welcoming people, we’re consistently high on-people’s ‘do-before I die’-agendas.
Bucket-lists-are-great-for-people, but-not-so good for tourism organisations, who rely on actual visits and actual money, rather than wishful thinking. We need to get Australia on the ‘to do, right now’ list.
But that job is getting harder every year.
Competitor tourism boards are increasingly organized, sophisticated and aggressive.
And our global audience are increasingly demanding – often revelling in the apparent sophistication of Europe and America, assuming that Australia is just a pretty face.
This case study shows how we found a way to get people to visit today, not someday.
We did this by unearthing an entirely new reason to visit - our food and wine. By showing that we could mix it with the culinary powerhouses of the world, we not only increased visitor numbers, but we unlocked a lucrative source of all-important revenue.
In the process, we:
• galvanized a vast array of internal stakeholders.
• summarised the eclectic subject matter with brutal simplicity.
• executed it with flexibility.
• deployed it with rigorous discipline, starting with internal sell-in and culminating in the mother of all activations.
Ultimately, we rebranded Australia as the greatest restaurant on earth, and managed to exceed our already tough visitor expenditure targets by $49m (source: IVS 2015).