Tourism Australia targets corporate meeting, event planners with new campaign

Thursday, 23 February 2012 00:16 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Tourism Australia has launched a new integrated marketing campaign aimed at corporate meeting and event planners as part of a broader strategy to grow Australia’s high yielding business events sector to as much as A$16 billion by 2020.

Launched at the Asia Pacific Incentives and Meetings Expo (AIME) 2012 in Melbourne, the campaign comes off the back of strong growth in the business events sector.

The multifaceted and digital campaign, including a new website, follows in the footsteps of Tourism Australia’s consumer marketing campaign, ‘there’s nothing like Australia’, and continued strength in business arrivals to Australia. For the first time Tourism Australia will consistently use the campaign positioning for all business events marketing activity.

Tourism Australia Managing Director Andrew McEvoy said business events and business visitation made a significant contribution to Australia’s tourism economy but that there was scope for significant growth long term under Australian tourism’s Tourism 2020 strategy.

“The economic impact of business events in Australia continues to rise with the latest figures from Tourism Research Australia stating delegates for business events contributed around A$8.4 billion in 2010, up from A$7.9 billion in 2009,” McEvoy said, adding, “On average business events visitors spend 55% more per day than the average visitor at A$212 per delegate per night - so the returns on our investment are strong but what’s more they are also more likely to return for a business and leisure visit to Australia in the future...In the year to September 2011, international business visitation rose 7% to 898,000, with strong growth from Asia, a critical region as Australia increasingly positions itself for the Asian Century.”

“Tourism Australia’s new campaign and its dedicated business events website are about reaching the decision makers for such events with a strong message that Australia is a good place to do business,” added McEvoy. “It has been developed based on insights from event planners in key international markets and will roll out in the USA, UK, China, New Zealand, Korea, Singapore and Indonesia, which continue to be core to the business events sector.”

The campaign aims to demonstrate why ‘there’s nothing like Australia’ for the corporate meetings and incentives market and also the associations market, featuring some of Australia’s most outstanding events and team-based activities in settings from dining under the stars in the spectacular outback to activities on World Heritage listed sites.