Tourism Tasmania Report JOHN FITZGERALD CEO, Tourism Tasmania All regions see increase in visitor numbers for 2016
travel trade and media representatives. I am pleased to report that the growing awareness and popularity of Tasmania amongst the Chinese, Hong Kong and Singaporean travel industry augurs well for Tasmania in the years ahead. There is no doubt the profile of our award-winning tourism products and experiences, combined with our premium food and drink experiences, are helping to turn us into a must-visit destination for more international and interstate travellers. This was certainly reflected at the recent Australian Tourism Awards where Tasmania won more medals than any other state, coming home with five gold, seven silver and two bronze, plus The Old Woolstore Apartment Hotel was inducted into the Hall of Fame. I would like to congratulate all the Tasmanian winners and nominees on such a marvellous achievement and it was great to back up our previous years with another outstanding performance. The popularity of our inaugural #TassieStyle summer advocacy competition and campaign, which finished at the end of February, also proved we are turning heads. More than 42 000 entries were received on our social media platforms, revealing people’s personal experiences of our island state over the three months of #TassieStyle. The promotion and competition has performed far better than we ever imagined, and I want to extend a big thank you to all the local hospitality operators, tourism operators and promotional partners who jumped on board and encouraged so many visitors and locals to post photos of their TassieStyle experience. But the marketing didn’t end there. Our latest version of Go Behind the Scenery marketing push kicked off at the end of February. The campaign continues the promotion of our state as a great leisure destination and uses a new approach to encourage people to plan and book their travel ahead of our coming winter season. We know that Australians found the videos from previous campaigns featuring local characters very engaging. So we have taken the proven appeal of these videos and combined them with an innovative and fun online mapping experience to entice people to plan an autumn holiday in Tasmania. The campaign is about to wrap up and has been supported by cooperative marketing with a range of commercial travel partners to generate more bookings and sales to Tasmania over the coming months. Initial reports are showing positive results and I will be able to give you more information on this in the next edition. And at the end of this month our interstate winter promotion will also be kicking off. This promotion will build on last year’s marketing activity but focus on the unique emotive experience on offer in a Tasmanian winter holiday. Tassie’s program of great winter events is one part of the story and will be used to encourage people to plan and book their trip here. With all this marketing going on, combined with our amazing Tassie tourism experiences and some great new businesses to open this year, I am confident our visitor economy will continue to grow and break more visitor records in 2017.
If you thought 2015 was a great year for Tasmanian’s visitor economy, then I’m pleased to say that 2016 was substantially better – and just as importantly, better for all our regions. The latest figures show the number of visitors coming to Tasmania on scheduled air and sea services in 2016 grew by seven per cent on the previous year. To be more precise, our island state welcomed around 1,236,400 interstate and international visitors during 2016. This result is great news. It’s the first time ever that we have passed the 1.2 million visitor mark, and goes a long way to keeping us on track with the growth rate needed to reach the government and industry’s joint T21 visitor economy goals by 2020. And all our tourism regions have shared in this growth, with visitor numbers to the south of the state growing by a healthy five per cent, while the Cradle Coast region saw seven per cent more visitors last year. The east coast continued its stellar performance with 10 per cent more interstate and overseas visitors, while northern Tasmania was the standout region for 2016 with an 11 per cent increase in numbers, due in part to a bumper December quarter. These figures were also reflected in THA’s Hotel Occupancy Report where members in all regions saw a growth in room nights in 2016, with the average state-wide occupancy level coming in at over 75 per cent for the year. This is amazing to think that on average more than 7 rooms out of every 10 in the state were booked out for the entire calendar year. The airlines and Spirit of Tasmania have continued to help us out here, with airlines scheduling over 165,000 extra seats on major routes to and from Tasmania in 2016. It was good to see that our visitors as well as locals responded to this increased capacity with all these extra seats and more being booked. The Spirits of Tasmania also continued their success story with an 11 per cent jump in interstate and international visitors travelling on the ships in 2016. The TT Line continues to do a great job of attracting more visitors to Tassie and the results show they are being rewarded for their effort. Tasmania’s positive profile amongst the travel trade in our main international source markets also gives me great confidence about our future prospects from the USA, Europe and Asia. This time last year I proudly reported that a record 211,800 international visitors had come to Tasmania in 2015. Twelve months on and the International Visitor Survey shows that the number of international visitors coming to Tassie during 2016 grew by a further 11 per cent, setting a new record of 235,700 visitors. However our growth has not necessarily been generated by the same markets that have driven Australia’s growth. We have continued to see above average visitor growth from the USA and Asia markets like Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, whereas in Australia the volume mainly came from countries like China and New Zealand. I returned late last month from a week-long Asia Tourism Sales Mission, where 14 Tasmanian tourism operators and I met with a number of
April 2017
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