Page 178 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 26 February 2014
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In 2013, Floriade, again, brought in excess of 400,000 visitors through the gates of Commonwealth Park, and NightFest had one of its most successful years to date, attracting over 33,000 attendees, a 30 per cent increase on the 2012 event.
Visit Canberra, our tourism promotion area, has done an outstanding job of promoting the city’s attractions and events to a very wide range of potential visitors through innovative campaigns like the human brochure campaign. The human brochure was a world-first tourism advocacy campaign that brought 500 social media savvy people to Canberra and used social media as a communications platform to promote the region’s attractions and experience.
Consumer research consistently shows that negative perceptions about our city are a travel barrier, but the human brochure ultimately let the destination and its tourism products speak for themselves. With the support of more than 60 industry partners, the human brochure was an outstanding success, and this can be measured on a number of levels. However, the three key objectives of the campaign were to increase the volume and sentiment of social media about Canberra, to build a community of advocates for our city to communicate with during the centenary year and beyond, and to increase the visitation to and yield for Canberra during our centenary year and beyond.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Dr Bourke.
DR BOURKE: Could the minister outline what industry recognition Visit Canberra’s human brochure campaign has received?
MR BARR: I am pleased to advise the Assembly that the human brochure campaign has received the high possible recognition in the Australian tourism industry by winning the 2013 Qantas Australian tourism award for destination marketing. Visit Canberra’s human brochure campaign beat entrants from all other states and territories in a category that is open to all tourism businesses and suppliers in the tourism industry. This particular recognition is, I think, timely because it shows how a small marketing agency like Visit Canberra can lead the tourism industry, can work with the tourism industry, to showcase the vibrancy of the tourism experience in Canberra.
The human brochure has also been recognised by receiving the silver award for the best use of social marketing and the bronze award for the most innovative idea and concept category in the Australasian Promotional Marketing Association’s star awards. It was highly commended at the mUmBRELLA CommsCon PR awards. It won the best tourism initiative at the Australian Hotels Association ACT hospitality awards and it was a finalist in four of the Association for Data-driven Marketing and Advertising awards in social media, brand experience, travel and hospitality and public relations categories.
It was an innovative campaign. It was risky, but the risk came off. It was a good result for the ACT and I encourage further innovation from Visit Canberra, particularly in the use of social media, to promote our city.
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