Tourism Tasmania
Sarah Clark
Tourism Tasmania’s CEO Sarah Clark highlights our biggest winter campaign, showcasing unique Off Season experiences Within the tourism and hospitality industry, shoulder seasons are generally a good time to catch our breath, celebrate our achievements, and plan what’s next. At Tourism Tasmania, planning has been at the forefront, with our Off Season campaign in full swing on a range of platforms across Australia. Now in its fourth year, this year’s Off Season program marks the states most significant investment in a winter marketing campaign, aimed at boosting visitation to our regions and supporting jobs and businesses during the cooler months. ‘Become a Winter Person’ is our lead tag-line for the Off Season campaign this year. It’s a simple call-to-action, encouraging mainlanders and Tasmanians to embrace the rewards found in the Tasmanian winter experience. Tasmanian tourism and hospitality operators are featured as ‘heroes’ of winter, and will appear on advertisements across billboards, in cinemas, street furniture, online video and social media. We’re also excited to partner with Broadsheet and The Hobart Magazine to further deepen Tasmanian storytelling and highlight some of the fantastic winter experiences on offer. While our campaign has proven to cut through advertising clutter with striking black and white imagery and creative storytelling, the true strength of the Off Season lies in the collaboration with industry. As many of you are familiar with, each year we invite tourism and hospitality businesses to leverage off our
campaign activity and get creative with special Off Season winter offerings.
This year 445 businesses across Tasmania have created over 500 ‘wintery’ experiences and events for locals and visitors, ranging from mushroom picking in abandoned railway tunnels and live music in underground caves to pop up saunas and cold water plunging in whisky barrels on Salamanca’s waterfront. Interstate visitation is always a big focus for our Off Season campaigns, but intrastate tourism also plays an important role in supporting our regions over the winter months, with the latest visitor data showing intrastate overnight travellers exceeded $1 billion for the first time ever in 2023. While our Off Season marketing campaign officially launched on 8 April, pre campaign activity has been running since February including a seat sale with Virgin Australia focused on converting travellers to visit our state over the cooler months. Beyond the Off Season, there is much to celebrate. Tasmania took home 11 tourism accolades at the Australian Tourism Awards in March (7 Gold, 3 Silver and 1 Bronze), with wukalina Walk, Bangor Vineyard and Grain of the Silos among the gold winners. Out of a total of 26 categories, this was a fantastic result for Tassie and the equal best result we’ve ever had at the national stage. I wanted to thank the tourism and hospitality industry for once again getting behind the Off Season, we can’t wait for this to be our biggest campaign yet.
41 Tasmanian Hospitality Review April/May Edition
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