The Southern Great Barrier Reef is part of a major campaign shining a spotlight on the health of the Great Barrier Reef and encouraging visitors to come to see one of the world's greatest assets for themselves.
The collaboration saw a dedicated campaign in Germany in 2018/19 and was led by Tourism Tropical North Queensland (TTNQ) with the Regional Tourism Organisations (RTOs) along the Great Barrier Reef and Tourism and Events Queensland (TEQ) Europe.
The campaign has included a focus on our SGBR islands –Great Keppel, Pumpkin, Heron, Wilson, Lady Musgrave, Lady Elliot Islands, alongside the precincts of the reef accessible from Cairns and Tropical North Queensland, Townsville, the Whitsundays and Mackay.
The second phase of this campaign for 2019/20 in now underway, which will include the Nordic region and will also focus on the mainland experiences along the Great Barrier Reef.
Europe/UK is one of the traditional key international markets to the Southern Great Barrier Reef, particularly reflected in steady growth from German visitors.
900,000 High Value Travellers (HVT) in the 20-34 and 40-49 year age brackets of Free Independent Travellers/Couples and Youth was targeted in Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Nurnberg, Munich and the greater Munich area.
The key travel periods for this market are the European winter/spring and school holidays and TEQ collaborated with key Tourism Trade Wholesalers in Germany, with whom our industry is contracted.
These include Explorer Fernreisen (ITO: ATS Pacific), Travel Essence, Boomerang Reisen (ITO Australia One), Dertour (ITO: Pacific Destinations) along with major airline partners, Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines.
The $270,000 campaign included agent training, digital, radio, dive magazine inserts and train billboards and resulted in an additional 500 flight bookings to Brisbane and 750 to Cairns, campervan hires, wholesale packages sold, increased website visitation and increased the general awareness of the incredible health of the Great Barrier Reef and the diversity of experiences along its 2,300 kilometres of coastline.
Through this partnership, the Southern Great Barrier Reef has stretched our investment so much further, particularly in our international markets.
Our international visitation to the SGBR has increased from about seven percent to nearly ten percent of our total visitation over the past few years and the region has engaged in a very focused effort to increase contracts with tourism wholesalers and inbound tour operators to materialize marketing efforts into bookings.
Our Southern Great Barrier Reef destination offers all of the experiences in a clean, green environment that is important to all of our visitors.
Tourism trade partners for the 2019/20 campaign will be Boomerang Reisen, Tourlane, Explorer Fernreisen, TUI, Best of Travel Group, FTI Touristik and Travel Essence, with the campaign focusing again on sales training, dive insert, social media, tourism trade press and a major GBR familiarization, focusing on the diversity of experiences both below and above the water on the islands and the mainland along one of the world’s greatest wonders – the Great Barrier Reef.
