Tourism Tasmania Report JOHN FITZGERALD CEO, Tourism Tasmania
Since I last wrote we’ve had a host of fantastic summer events – The Taste, the Cygnet Folk Festival, MONA FOMA and Falls to name just a few, with the Wooden Boat Festival, Festivale and others still to come. Like many Tasmanians, I took some time off over Christmas, which gave me an opportunity to check out the festivities first hand. From my place I watched the Sydney to Hobart yachts arrive and then headed to the waterfront to take a closer look. While there, I was bowled over by the high profile of the #TassieStyle competition I spoke about in my last Hospitality Review column. Down at the docks people were hitting the #TassieStyle photo booth, taking selfies with Tigger the #TassieStyle “thylacine” and snapping up free #TassieStyle hats, stubbie holders, T-shirts and badges. This social media competition is proving a phenomenal success, as visitors and locals flock to become trusted advocates of Tasmania by sharing images of their favourite Tasmanian experiences with their online networks. Every week since 4 December, thousands of images have been posted using the hashtag #TassieStyle. By mid-January, entries totalled more than 23,800, including shots of restaurants and accommodation. The #TassieStyle page on the Go Behind the Scenery website had recorded more than 22,000 visits – many of them driven by #TassieStyle collateral. Industry support has been outstanding, and with #TassieStyle continuing until 28 February I know you will keep up the good work encouraging your guests and customers to enter. Just before #TassieStyle ends, we’ll launch our next Go Behind the Scenery campaign, which will run until 9 April. With a million-dollar media budget, it will build on the proven appeal of Stories Told from the Inside Out by encouraging people to stop dreaming about Tasmania and actually plan a holiday here. Potential visitors will be able to map their own path around the state, pinning the stories that inspire them to the momentum ahead of our next Go Behind the Scenery campaign Tassie’s summer fans build
relevant locations along the way. And it doesn’t end there. We’re already working on our second Season of Curious campaign, which kicks off on 23 April and continues right through to 4 June. What’s best about our marketing in the first half of 2017 is the way these three campaigns support each other. Together they enable us to capitalise on Tassie’s sold-out summer to build demand for the slightly slower months: #Tassie Style grows interest, Go Behind the Scenery inspires people to plan a visit, and Season of Curious uses events to encourage them to travel here in winter. Of course, it would be great to have even more flights, sailings and accommodation so that we could meet all of the demand all year round. But it’s also important to acknowledge that we have already made considerable progress, with air capacity growing by over 170 000 seats across the key routes of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to both Hobart and Launceston in the 12 months to June 2016. We also had more sailings and carried many more passengers on the Spirits of Tasmania. On the accommodation front, major new ventures like Macq01 and the new Fragrance Group hotel in Hobart and the Silos in Launceston will provide a welcome boost when they open in 2017, and we recently had the exciting announcement that Australia’s first Hyatt Centric will be located in Hobart. Recent state-wide building reforms prompted in part by our booming visitor economy are expected to stimulate even further growth in tourism and hospitality. And all of this will create additional demand for more frontline hospitality staff to make sure we can give our visitors a world-class experience while they are in Tasmania. I congratulate the Tasmanian Hospitality Association, Tourism Industry Council Tasmania and regional visitor organisations for their important contribution to the government’s Tasmanian Tourism and Hospitality Workforce Development Plan released in December. Our own Tourism Tasmania Board Chair, James Cretan, will now head up a taskforce of tourism, hospitality and training representatives and report to the Premier’s Visitor Economy Advisory Council on how best to respond to challenges identified in the plan. James is exceptionally well qualified for the role, with long-standing interests in visitor accommodation and experience as a former chair of TAFE Tasmania and the Skills Institute. It’s been a busy summer so far, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. And remember, #TassieStyle still has another month to run before the grand prizes are awarded, so help us keep the momentum going by talking about the competition to your guests and customers, and encouraging them to enter. And if you’ve run out of printed promotional material, you can still order more free on Tourism Tasmania’s corporate website.
February 2017
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