Gold Coast Tourism reveals new campaigns to hit domestic visitors on the way
GOLD Coast Tourism has promised it won’t be resting on any laurels after the huge global exposure delivered by staging the 21st Commonwealth Games.
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GOLD Coast Tourism has promised it won’t be resting on any laurels after the huge global exposure delivered by staging the 21st Commonwealth Games.
Games TV coverage was broadcast to an estimated 1.5 billion people worldwide and Tourism Australia managing director John O’Sullivan told the Bulletin he believed the marketing generated by the event was worth hundreds of millions.
But Gold Coast Tourism executive director of corporate affairs and strategy Dean Gould said despite that huge sugar hit of exposure “you can’t just sit back now and hope”.
“If you were putting it in rugby terms, the Games has put us through this enormous gap but there are still 20 metres to the tryline — and you have got to run it,” he said.
“You can’t just go ‘I could have scored then’.”
Mr Gould revealed Gold Coast Tourism had immediate plans in place to roll out visitor marketing campaigns targeting the drive market and interstate tourists.
“The biggest audience for the Commonwealth Games is actually the Australian domestic market,” he said.
“We are the ones that love the Commonwealth Games the most because we win so many things. So that’s probably the biggest TV audience for the Games and we want to capitalise on that and continue a really strong push into the Australian domestic market.”
From yesterday, Gold Coast Tourism had domestic marketing campaigns underway.
“It is lovely to have the international exposure — that is not insignificant — but where Gold Coast tourism bread is buttered is in the domestic market so we’ll be pushing our domestic market very powerfully from April 16 onwards.”
From July 1, a new interstate campaign done in conjunction with Tourism and Events Queensland would be rolled out as well.
Mr Gould said a second key area Gold Coast Tourism would continue to focus on was attracting conference and conventions and their higher-spending delegates.
Upcoming major conferences include 7000 Chinese delegates for the Infinitus pharmaceutical conference worth an estimated $40 million to the city. Others includes a 1000 eac for a Japanese business conference and Korean company.
About 900 are booked in this year for a national liquor retailers conference.
“(After the Commonwealth Games) we know a lot of these countries will take these messages back to their organisations that this is a great place which can put on terrific events.”
Mr O’Sullivan said in terms of the advertising exposure of the Commonwealth Games, Tourism Australia’s recent cheeky star-studded ad during the Super Bowl — pretending to be a remake of Crocodile Dundee — was at about $100 million.
“The exposure from the Commonwealth Games will be in the hundreds of millions in terms of PR value. Then you think about this event over two weeks with beach venues, the beach volleyball.”
Figures associated with staging the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games estimated 672,000 visitors were attracted during the two weeks generating a $320m economic boost across Queensland.
Post-Games, it is expected the exposure would generate 490,000 visitors worth $550 million.
What the figures do not take into account is how much revenue was sucked out of the economy when hordes of residents departed for holidays elsewhere while the Games were on.
Gold Coast-based Federal Tourism Minister Steve Ciobo said he wouldn’t call the Games the best advertising campaign money couldn’t buy: “We tipped in $330 million and the State Government tipped in $1.5 billion at least. But what was the Commonwealth Games all about? As someone who has been there since day one of the journey, yes, it’s about the two weeks but really what it was actually about was building infrastructure for this city that was going to last decades.
“In five or 10 years times, Gold Coasters will look back on this as being the springboard for our city. It’s a coming of age for our city.”
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