How could Tourism Australia create a campaign and forget about the Gold Coast?
The Gold Coast is today handing out $1 million in discounts to encourage locals to holiday in their own backyard, but is struggling to buy a win against the latest damaging knocks to the devastated tourism industry.
As the city launches its latest tourism recovery campaign, called Play Money for Gold Coasters that unlocks discounts of up to 50 per cent on tourism experiences, it is battling on multiple fronts. And not all of them predictably stemming from the ongoing political wrangle over the border closure.
Destination Gold Coast has found itself locked in a stoush with Tourism Australia after the national tourism body left the nation’s prime tourist destination off a map in a new campaign to appeal to international travellers.
“It’s a mistake and a terrible mistake from where I sit,” Destination Gold Coast chair Paul Donovan said.
“I will be taking this to the highest levels.”
Tourism Australia this week launched its campaign to tap into the growing need for escapism and put Australia, and the nation’s global reputation for managing the pandemic, front of mind for post COVID international travel.
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Tourism Australia managing director Phillipa Harrison said the demand for Australian holiday experiences had not waned despite many putting travel plans on hold.
“Although the current border restrictions mean that international travellers can’t visit right now, we need to continue to keep Australia top of mind through bold and engaging initiatives and remind them of the exceptional experiences that await them when they can travel here again,” she said.
Through a series of videos and 8D sound, which is described as an immersive audio technology that makes a viewer wearing headphones feel as though noises from the landscapes are coming from all around them, Tourism Australia highlighted a raft of uniquely Australian experiences.
Those experiences were then pinpointed on a map. Trouble is, while the Gold Coast rated enough of an experience, it was conspicuously absent on the map.
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It is the latest dagger in the heart for the recovery efforts for Australia’s famed holiday playground.
It comes as the first week of the State Election campaign ended with the city’s tourism body taking the extraordinary step of pleading with the Premier not to delay opening the Queensland border, even though NSW is still racing to trace the origin of eight mystery COVID cases.
Signalling a major departure in her rhetoric on the border closure and watering down her support for tourism businesses at all costs, LNP leader Deb Frecklington also backed the government’s position, claiming NSW needed to explain its cases or face continued Queensland border closure.
Keeping the border shut another month would potentially push even more Gold Coast tourism businesses over the edge of closure.
“Please, please, please let’s keep it on track for November 1 because we cannot afford another delay,” Donovan said.
“We need hope and November 1 is going to be a critical date for us. Let’s stick with it.”
Australia’s decimated tourism industry has been encouraged to switch focus to domestic visitors, and on Tuesday scored more than $250 million in the Federal Budget for a Regional Tourism Recovery Package.
But unless the political, economic and smart marketing planets start aligning for tourism on the Gold Coast, the injection of all the state and federal recovery funding will feel like little more than play money.
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