Goal 2: Drive demand for Tasmania
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Annual Report 2014-15
Marketing campaigns
Tourism Tasmania aims to increase demand for Tasmania and encourage more people to visit. To do this, Tourism Tasmania runs two major marketing campaigns each year to generate awareness of Tasmania and encourage potential visitors to convert their interest into a booking.
To make the most of these campaigns, Tourism Tasmania integrates them with other Tourism Tasmania activities including distribution, sector partnerships and public relations activities.
The campaigns continue to build on the previous Go Behind the Scenery campaigns, first introduced in 2013 and reinforce the same message, while showing people how easy it is to plan and book a Tasmanian holiday as well as give them the confidence to book now.
Go Behind the Scenery – Spring 2014
The campaign built on the findings and insights gained from formal tracking research conducted during the earlier campaigns.
Tourism Tasmania's innovative Go Behind the Scenery – Spring 2014 marketing campaign ran for seven weeks in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland from 17 August to 5 October 2014.
Tourism Tasmania designed the campaign to encourage more Australians to plan and book a visit to Tasmania during the coming spring and summer seasons.
The campaign saw Tourism Tasmania invest around $3.5 million in media advertising in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane for the two-month promotion. In return for its media investment, Tourism Tasmania negotiated additional bonus TV, print, cinema, outdoor and digital advertising.
This does not include Tourism Tasmania's additional investment in cooperative marketing programs with travel and air partners or the investment made by the travel and air partners themselves to promote Tasmania and generate sales. The additional investment from Tourism Tasmania and its travel partners in these supporting activities was a further $1.5 million, bringing the total investment to $5 million.
Central to the campaign was the Behind the Scenery microsite. Over the period of the campaign, the site received 246,237 visitors. The microsite also featured a Win a Walk on Us competition designed to increase the number of subscribers to the Discover Tasmania newsletter and further engage with those already subscribed. Tourism Tasmania received 8,270 entries and along with competition entries from a Broadsheet Subscriber Drive generated 9,741 new subscribers.
As part of the campaign, Tourism Tasmania also undertook trade, public relations, online, sector and other marketing activities between August and November that significantly increased the size, reach and longevity of the spring campaign.
In addition, a number of other Tasmanian tourism organisations also promoted the state through their own marketing activities including TT-Line, Tasmania's regional tourism organisations, Tasmanian travel wholesalers and individual tourism businesses.
Major partner Flight Centre and access partner Jetstar also experienced a significant increase in sales across the campaign period when compared to the same period last year.
Go Behind the Scenery – Autumn 2015
Tourism Tasmania's Go Behind the Scenery – Autumn 2015 campaign launched on 1 March and built on the previous Go Behind the Scenery – Spring 2014. The campaign ran for seven weeks though to 19 April 2015.
Tourism Tasmania invested over $3.75 million in media, along with $500,000 in production.
The campaign ensured all campaign messages, partner activities and campaign creative reinforced Tasmania's tourism brand, first introduced in 2013.
The campaign aimed to get people's attention and show them how easy it is to plan and book a Tasmanian holiday during autumn.
The campaign showcased Tasmania's behind the scenes experiences while communicating that a holiday in Tasmania is all about its people and the proximity to outstanding produce.
With research showing that potential visitors to Tasmania want to know how to travel in the state, the campaign continued to provide consumers with travel information and detailed itineraries. In keeping with Tourism Tasmania's marketing strategy, the campaign also provided deals to encourage consumers to book now.
Along with print, digital and office tower advertising, the refreshed Go Behind the Scenery microsite was central to the campaign. Over the course of the campaign, the microsite attracted over 120,186 website visitors looking for more information on holidaying in Tasmania.
The campaign microsite built on the previous content to provide richer information. The microsite featured eight new videos in the See & Do section and a new set of three, seven and 14-day itineraries. The First Timers section detailed some key experiences around the state as seen through the eyes of first time visitors and a new Social Locals section provided information on how and when visitors could #Askatassielocal during their'take overs' of Discover Tasmania's social channels.
The microsite also featured a Win Your Stay competition that aimed to increase the number of subscribers to the Discover Tasmania newsletter and further engage those already subscribed. In all, the competition attracted 7,604 entries. Consistent with Tourism Tasmania's use of direct marketing, the campaign also saw sign ups to the Discover Tasmania newsletter increase by 5,000 subscribers through competitions run in conjunction with Broadsheet and leveraged off the Qantas Australian Tourism Awards (QATA).
In addition, the campaign introduced a social media promotion based on a local's perspective of regional highlights, attractions and life in Tasmania. Tourism Tasmania devised a series of four, three-day projects in which local Tasmanian identities from each of Tasmania's regions directly engaged with our social media community. As a result, the total reach on Facebook over the four takeovers was 2,465,998.
The campaign creative also included links to Tourism Tasmania's social media channels on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Over the campaign, aviation access partners sold 261,621 seats.
Tourism Tasmania will launch Go Behind the Scenery – Spring 2015 in mid to late August 2015.
Winter activation 2015
In addition to the Go Behind the Scenery campaigns planned for the coming year, Tourism Tasmania will invest around $500,000 in a winter campaign in Melbourne and Sydney. The campaign aims to establish Tasmania as a short-break destination in winter and will feature itineraries and packages that can be booked for travel immediately.
Visiting influencer program
Tourism Tasmania's visiting influencer program (VIP) hosts journalists, social media commentators and other influencers to showcase Tasmania as a holiday destination. These activities support and broaden the reach of Tourism Tasmania's marketing messages through positive editorial and advocacy.
Over this past year, Tourism Tasmania assisted the makers of What a Wonderful World, a Chinese travelogue documentary broadcast on CCTV and 110 local stations in China, including three satellite TV stations and 11 online video portals. The program will also screen on four airlines – Cathay Pacific Airways, Dragon Airlines, United Airlines and Ethiopian Airlines – towards the end of 2015. The producers visited locations in Tasmania for film content including Launceston, Tamar Valley, Freycinet National Park and several experiences featuring wildlife and gourmet in the wilderness.
A small film crew from Singapore-based Channel News Asia visited Tasmania in June to film three episodes of a morning show TV program called First Look Asia hosted by Annalisa Burgos.Over 28 Asian countries and territories watch Channel News Asia.
Tourism Tasmania worked in collaboration with Tourism Victoria to assist TVB Travelogue – a travel, cooking and shopping series on seasonal produce and meeting the maker experiences. Tasmania will feature in five 30-minute episodes of the series to air on Hong Kong's largest station – TVB in November 2015 as part of TVB's anniversary celebrations.
Tourism Tasmania worked closely with Tourism Australia to host the filming of food-travel-lifestyle show Savour Australia, hosted by Jason Godfrey. The series is a sequel to the highly successful earlier Jason Down Under series and follows the host's gourmet journey across sevenstates and territories in Australia. The project extended the Restaurant Australia messaging of'people, place and produce' to middle class, affluent Malaysian consumers. The resulting series will broadcast on Malaysia's LiTV channel.
Tourism Tasmania's visiting influencer program also worked with Tourism Australia to support their Invite the World to Dinner gala event in Hobart, the highlight of Tourism Australia's Restaurant Australia campaign.
Tourism Tasmania organised 27 famils across Tasmania for domestic and international media in conjunction with the event.
Tourism Tasmania hosted a media event for ten of Australia's top media and freelance writers in Tasmania from 16-17 June 2015. The event aimed to strengthen Tourism Tasmania's relationships with Australia's leading travel editors and writers in preparation for brand and campaign activity in 2015-16 and to thank them for their continued support of Tasmania. The event also provided an opportunity to seed new story ideas including What's New in Tassie, the Three Capes Track and the centenary of the first national park in Tasmania, as well as introduce the media to Tasmania's 2014 Qantas Australian Tourism Award winners.
In addition to these major projects, Tourism Tasmania partnered with special-interest experiences and peak industry bodies to reach target niche audiences and worked in collaboration with major event organisers of MOFO, Dark MOFO, Festival of Voices, and The Falls Festival to secure media coverage in national and international publications.
Social media
Social media is an important part of Tourism Tasmania's consumer marketing campaigns and advocacy and is a
core component of the organisation's new approach to marketing the state. The social media program aims to foster advocacy for Tasmania outside traditional media channels and generate awareness, interest and a desire to visit Tasmania. These activities ensure Tourism Tasmania's ongoing presence in the marketplace outside of paid advertising activity.
Social media activities encourage and facilitate consumer sharing of Tasmanian experiences on three key platforms: Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
In 2014-15, Tourism Tasmania's social media community across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram substantially increased from 68,669 followers to 305,694 followers, an increase of 345 per cent, demonstrating the growing popularity of Tasmania as a travel destination on social media.
This coming year will see further integration of social media into our marketing mix with greater reliance on third-party advocacy and the use of word-of-mouth to promote the destination, all objectives ideally suited to social media.
Tourism Tasmania uses the hashtag #discovertasmania to encourage sharing of content across all social channels. Over recent months, Tourism Tasmania has received an average of 1,300 images each week from visitors and locals through its Instagram account alone.
Tourism Tasmania also leveraged Dark Mofo through its visiting influencer program, social media and public relations activities, distribution activity and co-operative campaigns with partners. In 2015, co-operative marketing activity included a social media campaign, $20 Get a Room, to generate awareness of Dark Mofo and Tasmania and encourage travel to Tasmania. The combined reach of the campaign through social channels was 233,703 along with targeted email messaging to a database of over 1 million.
Public relations
Tourism Tasmania's public relations (PR) program aims to generate awareness, interest and a desire to visit Tasmania by showcasing the state's experiences, products and events to domestic and international influencers. The PR activities support and broaden the reach of Tourism Tasmania's key marketing campaigns and brand messages. PR supports Tasmanian events, new products and experiences, awards and accolades, and industry and sector partnerships through the generation of media and influencer interest and coverage both through traditional and non-traditional channels.
Quarterly What's On and What's New media releases are distributed throughout the year to domestic and international media and influencers.
Tourism Tasmania hosted PR events and campaigns to strengthen Tourism Tasmania's engagement with leading travel editors, journalists, leading photographers, online content generators and opinion leaders.
Tasmania is one of the World's Top Regions to Visit in 2015 (according to Lonely Planet).
Tourism Tasmania also works to generate content for social media channels, seed story ideas and generate media coverage.
Tourism Tasmania's international PR effort extends to working closely with Tourism Australia's head office and in-market representatives to obtain maximum share of voice for Tasmania. Tourism Tasmania's PR activities also aim to capitalise on emerging opportunities.
Lonely Planet Best in Travel 2015 announcement
In October 2014, Lonely Planet ranked Tasmania number four in Lonely Planet's list of top ten regions in the world to visit in 2015, and the only Australian and New Zealand destination to be included in the 2015 edition in the three'best of' list for the top ten regions, countries and cities. This announcement presented an opportunity for Tourism Tasmania to strengthen Tasmania's global profile and stimulate further interest, appeal and intention to travel to Tasmania during 2015.
Tourism Tasmania implemented dedicated industry, trade and consumer communications strategies to stimulate local industry sentiment and maximise the tourism opportunities and returns generated by the announcement. Local and national print, online, radio, television and social media coverage of the announcement was significant during the week of the announcement with 30 radio interviews, 15 television news segments and over 72 print and online articles generated. Prolific Twitter, Instagram and Facebook activity was seen worldwide with Tourism Tasmania's social media coverage achieving 2.7 million views during the first week of the announcement.
2014 Qantas Australian Tourism Awards
Tasmania's tourism sector achieved a record number of wins in the Qantas Australian Tourism Awards 2014, with a record 10 gold, three silver and three bronze awards. Tourism Tasmania undertook a range of promotions to capitalise on this result including using its social media channels to build anticipation, highlight Tasmania's awards success and encourage widespread sharing of the announcement.
Other associated PR activities included a promotion to win the ultimate Tassie holiday experience and a full-page tourism advertisement and editorial in The Weekend Australian Magazine, and newspaper advertisements in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Tourism Tasmania also placed online advertisements on the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Guardian websites, as well as on Trip Advisor's homepage and their Tasmania destination pages.
Tourism Tasmania also distributed a special awards e-newsletter promoting the Tasmanian award winners and the competition to Tasmania's 112,000 domestic newsletter subscribers.
Partnership marketing
Tourism Tasmania works cooperatively with industry and intergovernmental partners to reach targeted audiences who travel in order to pursue their particular interest or passion. Marketing those experiences and events in which Tasmania has a natural or unique advantage allows Tourism Tasmania to attract consumers who already have a high potential to visit.
This year, Tourism Tasmania undertook cooperative marketing activities with special interest partners such as consumer direct campaigns, specialist media and trade famils, as well as attendance at specialist consumer expos including the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show and the Adventure Travel and Backpacker Expo.
Tourism Tasmania, in partnership with Tourism Australia and industry operators, supports the Best of Australia programs. These programs promote Tasmania's leading experiences in our domestic and international markets and include Great Golf Courses of Australia, Great Walks of Australia and the Ultimate Winery Experiences of Australia. The programs are supported through public relations activities, media and specialist travel trade initiatives.
Tourism Tasmania supported marketing activity in the international backpacker, youth and student market through cooperative marketing activities. Tourism Tasmania also supported the fifth edition of Safari Pete's Guide to Backpacking Tasmania, the only free backpackerguidebook in the Australian market.
Events
Events contribute to Tasmania's culturally vibrant brand and often provide a trigger for visitation. Tourism Tasmania supports a number of events and identifies opportunities to extend their messaging and build Tasmania's profile through partnering channels.
The Tasmanian Government contributes to the funding of the V8 Supercars Tasmania 400 Series in Tasmania. This year's event was held on 27-29 March and attracted over 53,500 people. The event had a combined average television audience of 1.386 million live across Fox Sports, Network Ten and also on Foxtel Play and Foxtel Go.
Tourism Tasmania harnessed the opportunity to leverage the exposure of the destination through V8's broadcasting, digital and social channels. In response, social content reached an audience in excess of 232,800 followers and 567,588 across digital platforms.
Tourism Tasmania supports a number of sporting events by providing destination content and targeted messaging, generating interest through Tourism Tasmania's social channels and sharing content previously published on the partner's social channels. In 2014-15, this included the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015, Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, AFL games in Tasmania and other smaller sporting events.
Tasmania's sponsorship of the Hawthorn Football Club continues to allow Tourism Tasmania to harness significant promotional opportunities each year including the placement of marketing assets on the Hawthorn Football Club website, home game print and big screen assets and the Tasmania Game of the Year, a Melbourne-based home game that provides further promotional opportunities.
This year's Tasmania Game of the Year maintained the momentum generated by Tourism Australia's Restaurant Australia campaign in featuring Tasmania's food and beverage experiences while highlighting our people, place and produce on the ground to a crowd of more than 66,000 fans and inside at the President's Function to over 500 influential guests.
Tourism Tasmania also worked with other events and festivals to varying degrees including helping the Festival of Voices and Falls Festival develop brand-aligned content and reach new audiences.
International marketing
Tourism Tasmania's international strategy aims to maximise existing market share in mature international markets and capitalise on the potential growth of emerging international markets.
In 2014-15, Tourism Tasmania committed $3.2 million on international marketing activity. This included in-market representation and cooperative activity with Tourism Australia and the Restaurant Australia campaign and the hosting of the Invite the World to Dinner gala event.
The investment also assisted Australian-based inbound tour operators, domestic-based international marketing partnerships and the Tasmanian tourism industry attend major international trade events to promote the destination and the products they offer.
Together, we showed the world why there's nothing like Australia's people, places, and produce Tourism Australia would like to thank the people of Tasmania, Tourism Tasmania and all of our key event partners for their enthusiasm and support in hosting key food and wine influencers during Restaurant Australia's Invite the World to Dinner.
Restaurant Australia
Tourism Tasmania continued to strengthen its partnership with Tourism Australia through participation in Tourism Australia's global multimillion-dollar Restaurant Australia campaign. The campaign aimed to promote Australia to international travellers as a destination that delivers quality food and drink experiences – not just good restaurants.
The campaign had an estimated advertising value of over $44,127,500 with an estimated audience of 1.26 billion. The overall national campaign investment exceeded $30 million.
Nearly 2,200,000 people watched a cinema advertisement promoting the campaign.
Tourism Australia also produced a documentary on Restaurant Australia, to be released in August 2015 with a domestic and international broadcast schedule.
Invite the World to Dinner
Tasmania's reputation for premium quality food and drink along with its unique eating experiences made it the ideal location to host Invite the World to Dinner, the final gala dinner event of Tourism Australia's Restaurant Australia campaign held at the Museum of Old and New Art – Mona in November 2014.
The event saw 86 of the world's most influential food and beverage media, chefs and personalities come to Tasmania for a food celebration featuring a menu highlighting Tasmania's quality produce. The conclusion of the event saw all 86 influencers convene at Mona for a final dinner for 250 guests.
A total of 13 film crews from Australia and overseas visited Tasmania for the Invite the World to Dinner phase of the project.
The combined reach through social channels of the 86 international influencers was 106 million with 7.2 million impressions across Tourism Tasmania's social media channels.
In conjunction with the event, Tourism Tasmania delivered 27 pre and post famils that incorporated food and wine experiences across the state.
Visit by Chinese president
In November 2014, Tourism Tasmania delivered a comprehensive multi-platform campaign to leverage the exposure generated by the visit to Tasmania of Chinese President Xi Jingping and First Lady Peng Liyuan. The campaign generated extensive traditional media and social media interest, both domestically within Australia and in China.
As a result of the campaign, 11.68 million people on Weibo viewed Tourism Tasmania's campaign hashtag.
China's official and most influential TV channel CCTV covered the president's visit to Tasmania for six minutes out of their 30-minute daily news program, focussing significant attention on Tasmania within China. Media coverage of the visit in China by leading TV and online media reached over 200 million people.
Qantas agreement
Tourism Tasmania implemented in-market consumer campaigns including an extensive cooperative campaign (consumer and trade) partnering with Qantas in Singapore and Hong Kong as part of Tourism Tasmania's three-year Memorandum of Understanding with Qantas.
Trade events
To promote Tasmania in our international markets, Tourism Tasmania, along with select Tasmanian businesses, travelled overseas to attend major international trade events. These included the Australia Marketplace in Los Angeles, the International Tourismus Borse (ITB) in Berlin, the National Association of Travel Agents Singapore Travel Fair and the Malaysia Association of Tour and Travel Agents Travel Fair.
Tourism Tasmania also led a highly successful Sales Mission to Pan Asia in September, attended by 16 Tasmanian businesses and in March 2015, Tourism Tasmania CEO John Fitzgerald accompanied a trade delegation to China, led by the Premier of Tasmania.
Tourism Tasmania also promotes the state to international sellers in Australia. To do so, Tourism Tasmania attended the Australian Tourism Exchange (ATE) Media Marketplace in Melbourne accompanied by a record number of 23 Tasmanian operators, and Corroboree Europe in Adelaide, attended by 300 qualified Aussie Specialist agents from key European markets.
Tourism Tasmania also worked to promote the state's tourism offer to over 300 Chinese travel agents on Hamilton Island at Corroboree Greater China in April 2015.
International promotions
To encourage sales, Tourism Tasmania works with partners to promote the destination within our target markets.
Tourism Tasmania partnered with North American Down Under Answers (DUA), Qantas, Tourism Victoria and the South Australian Tourism Commission (SATC) to deliver a Southern Splendours co-op campaign promoting Melbourne, Hobart and Adelaide. Initial results from the campaign show an increase in passenger bookings from January-March 2015 to 193, a significant increase from 130 bookings for the previous full six-month period of January-June 2014.
Following Tourism Tasmania's highly successful campaign with Signature Travel Network in 2013-14, Tourism Tasmania again partnered with Signature Travel Network and other state tourism organisations to deliver an integrated campaign with a total investment of $33,000.
The campaign launched in January 2015 and included extensive print marketing in Signature Travel's consumer publications, online advertorial, dedicated destination microsites and a consumer prize of a trip to Australia. As a result of the campaign, Signature Travel Network Australia's revenue for January-March 2015 increased by around 16 per cent on the same period the previous year.
Tourism Tasmania also partnered with the German outdoor clothing, accessory and travel retailer Globetrotter.de on a comprehensive campaign. Other partners in the campaign included Tourism Australia, Tourism NT, Tourism Victoria and tactical conversion partner Travel Essence who will deliver a co-operative marketing campaign focused on promoting Australia's walking experiences. The campaign launched in June 2015 with an investment by Tourism Tasmania of $22,000.
Distribution
Cooperative promotions
Tourism Tasmania works with travel distributors that sell Tasmanian travel products including travel retailers, wholesalers, airlines, online travel agents and inbound tour operators.
Our aim is to help sellers convert holiday planners to visitors by providing high quality Tasmanian holiday information, encouraging them to contract a wide range of Tasmanian travel products and helping them communicate the Tasmanian brand to their customers.
This year, Tourism Tasmania undertook cooperative advertising with retail partners Flight Centre, Travel Associates, AOT (Sunlover), TasVacations, Travelodge, RACQ and RACT.
Tourism Tasmania partnered with TasVacations in national retail and consumer-direct campaigns through retail agencies and auto associations including RACQ, NRMA and RAA. The campaign saw a strong increase in sales in the second half of the year.
Tourism Tasmania worked with access partner Jetstar on an integrated digital, print and broadcast campaign to provide rich content and regional touring messages. Tasmania was the first destination to take over the home page of the Jetstar website. During the campaign there were 9,903 seats sold, representing an increase of 7,210 seats more than the average daily bookings for the four weeks before the campaign.
For the first time, Tourism Tasmania partnered with Travelodge to support the development of a microsite with experience vignettes and deals.
Tourism Tasmania also worked with Tiger Airways on a two-week tactical seat sale and dedicated Tasmanian microsite delivered in Melbourne through radio and digital channels and with access partners Virgin Australia and Qantas on a range of cooperative partnership activities.
In addition, Jetstar, Virgin and Qantas seat sales were again timed to coincide with Tourism Tasmania's Go Behind the Scenery spring and autumn campaigns.
Flight Centre was again the exclusive conversion partner in our Go Behind the Scenery spring and autumn campaigns with all campaign calls to action going to Flight Centre.
Training and famils
Tourism Tasmania delivers training programs for travel sellers to give them the necessary understanding and information on the destination to make the most of their Tasmanian sales. Since introducing its three Tassie Specialist online training modules, 500 travel agents have completed the training, qualifying them as Tassie Specialists. This past year saw 308 sellers qualify as Tassie Specialists.
Tourism Tasmania also conducted training with Infinity Holidays, Flight Centre's wholesale arm, in preparation for Tourism Tasmania's 2015 pre-spring campaign.
To inform sellers of Tasmanian product, Tourism Tasmania holds an annual Talkabout Tasmania Roadshow.
The Roadshow gives travel sellers the opportunity to meet local Tassie operators and gain insights into Tasmanian products that will be advantageous to them when selling Tasmania. This year, 18 Tasmanian operators presented their product to around 260 travel agents in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
This year also saw Tourism Tasmania introduce a Tassie Specialist Conference, open exclusively for qualified Tassie Specialists. The all-inclusive two-day conference included the opportunity to participate in pre and post famils managed by Tourism Tasmania. The inaugural event attracted 75 specialist travel agents who engaged with 30 Tasmanian operators.
Also for the first time, Tourism Tasmania held a dedicated Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) event – Tasbound. The event was open to members and non-members of ATEC and attracted 38 Tasmanian operators and 36 inbound tour operators. This compared favourably to a similar joint ATEC event held in Victoria last year that attracted around 30 inbound tour operators.
TigerTOUR tourism database
Tourism Tasmania maintains a database of over 2,000 Tasmanian tourism products including accommodation, attractions, hire, tours and events. The TigerTOUR database is a vital marketing resource for Tasmania's tourism industry and is used by Tourism Tasmania to source product information for its Discover Tasmania website and the bi-monthly Tasmanian Travelways magazine.
In addition, the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) incorporates the TigerTOUR database into its nation-wide dataset of tourism product. ATDW distributes this data to over 140 different travel websites and apps such as Australia.com, visitor information centres and regional tourism websites.
In 2014, Tourism Tasmania began transitioning responsibility for updating the business listings in the TigerTOUR database to the individual businesses themselves through the introduction of the MyTigerTOUR online interface. MyTigerTOUR gives operators the ability to edit their listing themselves online at anytime. This includes adjusting their rates or entry price, their contact information and updating their images.
Introducing the ability for businesses to self-author is in advance of a larger project scheduled for late 2015 that will see the TigerTOUR database decommissioned with Tasmanian businesses subsequently entering and editing their listing directly onto the national database managed by ATDW. Tourism Tasmania will continue to publish all listings on its Discover Tasmania website.
Tourism Tasmania worked with Tasmania's regional tourism organisations to introduce the new self-authoring approach to operators on a region-by-region basis. To help operators transition to self-authoring, Tourism Tasmania held a series of workshops in partnership with the RTOs in each region across Tasmania.
These workshops complemented other information resources, developed by Tourism Tasmania and published on Tourism Tasmania's corporate website, to help operators make the transition. Tourism Tasmania also used direct electronic and print messaging to advise operators of the change and provide assistance in adopting the new approach. Tourism Tasmania will continue to quality assure all business information prior to publishing on the ATDW database.
Discover Tasmania website
Tourism Tasmania's Discover Tasmania website aims to engage and motivate audiences and inform them about Tasmania. The website publishes information on how to get here, how to get around and the experiences and attractions on offer. It also includes a full listing of all Tasmanian tourism products, extensive mapping to make it easier for visitors to plan their travel, and details of all featured events to be held over the coming year to assist in long-term holiday planning.
Tourism Tasmania launched a redeveloped Discover Tasmania website in February 2014. Further development since the website's launch included the addition of a social hub page to bring together the best of Tourism Tasmania's social media posts in a single location. Doing so provides further incentive for people to share their interest in Tasmania.
Tourism Tasmania also redeveloped the events landing page on the website to better promote main events, provide a schedule of natural events across the state and a football fixture for the year in advance. The new page also now includes a list of all featured events for the year to assist potential visitors with their long-term planning and a redeveloped events calendar that makes it easier for website visitors to search all events over any given period.
In addition, Tourism Tasmania extended the mapping functionality of the website to enable the display of search results in map view.
Over the year there were 1,686,759 visits to the website with an average visit time of nearly five minutes. Note that a comparison with previous years is not possible as significant changes in Tourism Tasmania's business processes, especially in the closure of its international websites, resulted in a discontinuity in the data series.
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