Page 1941 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 24 October 1989
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communities to come and holiday in Canberra and to hold their meetings and conventions in the national capital. It is important that we take every possible opportunity to project Canberra's tourism value.
The strategy developed by the bureau has involved very cost-effective measures combined with cooperative marketing with the industry. The bureau's multicultural marketing manager, Mr Vic Rebikoff, a dedicated Canberran, known, I am sure, to all of the Assembly as an energetic worker in the area of ethnic affairs, has been able to develop extensive networks in marketing Canberra, particularly through the multicultural media who have embraced the broad and important philosophy that all Australians must have a better understanding of the national capital. The need for this has been consistently reinforced through research which has shown by far the greatest proportion of respondents claiming to have no knowledge of Canberra are from non-English speaking backgrounds.
The media support has seen a number of excellent documentaries produced by the SBS Vox Populi program which have shown Canberra in its full glory. The print media, through the Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Chinese, Lebanese and Vietnamese national newspapers, have produced strong supplements dealing with the diverse range of accommodation and attractions in Canberra.
I should like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the support the bureau's campaign has received from the industry. The plans and strategies developed by the Tourist Bureau will not realise their full potential until supported by the local industry. Cooperative marketing is the key to our future success, and the industry must continue to take more responsibility for the promotion and marketing of Canberra.
I am pleased to say that, through a number of very successful familiarisation visits by journalists, the local industry has provided strong support leading to a range of positive articles which have stimulated numerous visits from large groups and individual families. Many of the articles produced following journalists' visits have been syndicated throughout Asia and Europe. This media interest has not been confined to Australia. A number of international television crews have visited Canberra through interest in the strategy, most notably an Italian documentary team who produced a program that would have conservatively reached 70 million Europeans.
To complement the strategy, I recently launched a multilingual tourism brochure on Canberra in Sydney. A quantity of 90,000 have been produced, with a run of over 10,000 in nine different languages. We have been delighted by the favourable response the brochure elicited from a wide range of ethnic community leaders and multicultural media. The brochures have already proved their worth. Delegates at the recent international conference on
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