Go Behind the Scenery tourism ad campaign switched off for winter

A TOURISM campaign lauded as Tasmania’s most successful will be switched off next week, for four months.

A TOURISM campaign lauded as Tasmania’s most successful will be switched off next week, for four months.

A national tourism body warned the winter blackout, during events such as Dark Mofo, will set back efforts to boost visitor numbers.

The third phase of Tourism Tasmania’s $3 million Go Behind the Scenery campaign ends on April 5, with the marketing body confirming it would not restart until August.

Tourism and Transport Forum chief executive Ken Morrison questioned the move.

“The risk is that once that momentum is lost, your marketing essentially has to start from scratch,” he said.

“Investing now in a winter campaign would ensure the awareness and familiarity that has been built over recent years is not lost and is instead used as a springboard for the winter season.’’

Tourism Industry Council Tasmania chief executive Luke Martin said key winter events such as Dark Mofo, Festival of Voices and AFL matches would benefit from boosted winter marketing.

“We are literally going gangbusters for six months of the year but if we want to go hard we’ll have to address the issue of seasonality and spread visitation throughout the rest of the year,” he said.

“Go Behind the Scenery is capturing people’s imaginations. All the feedback has been really positive.”

Mr Martin said the council supported the incoming Liberal Government’s plan to boost tourism marketing by $4 million a year.

Tourism Tasmania chief executive John Fitzgerald said the campaign was likely to be rebooted in August.

“Our marketing and our campaign resources are invested at the times and in the locations where our research shows we will get the best return on this investment for tourism,” he said.

Mr Fitzgerald said Tourism Tasmania was contributing more than $1 million to the promotion of events, trade marketing activities and cooperative marketing initiatives with national travel partners during winter.

Mr Fitzgerald said Tourism Tasmania had already identified key opportunities to use the extra funding to discuss with new Tourism Minister.

The organisation is still searching for a new executive director of marketing, after Kathryn McCann was poached by Federal Group last November.