28 January 2009

Over 2.3 million visit 'dream job' website

Over 2.3 million people have visited the website of Tourism Queensland following its appeal for someone to look after Hamilton Island.

In what could be described as a highly innovative media stunt, the tourist board advertised for a caretaker for the island, in the Great Barrier Reef.

The move generated massive press coverage worldwide.

Since the campaign was launched on January 12, the website - www.islandreefjob.com - has received 10,666 applications.

Of these, over 660 have come from the UK - the second highest number of unique visitors to the site (7.5%), even beating Australia (4.7%) which is at the moment ranked fifth.

The US, UK, Germany and Canada are the four leading countries delivering traffic to the site.

"The only countries that haven't delivered visitation are Somalia, Western Sahara,and North Korea," said a spokesman.

"Over 41,000 people have been referred through facebook.com

"We have received applicants from as far as Mongolia, the Vatican City and Kazakhstan,"

By Bev Fearis

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Your Comments (2)

The Best Job in the World!

The PR launch of The Best Job in the World has been a huge success and the results and media attention so far has been overwhelming. However, media exposure is just one part of our goals for this campaign, which has been a year in the planning. Of course, our key goal is all about converting the interest in Queensland into bookings and Tourism Queensland in the UK is also working on joint marketing campaigns with tour operators and airline partners, undertaking viral marketing campaigns and linking with non-travel brand partners to further promote the campaign and concept, all of which will be measurable in terms of bookings and visitors numbers. The overall campaign is so much more than a publicity stunt and has the ultimate goal of increasing destination awareness and visitor arrivals to Queensland . . . Jane Nicholson Regional Director UK, Ireland Nordic Tourism Queensland

By daisy sells, Friday, January 30, 2009
As expected to date..

No surprising a &#pound;75000 a year job in the whitsundays working a few hours a day has generated such a response, but do these visitors represent potential visitors? Only once an increase in business can be attributed to this campaign can it be judged successful. Good marketing must generate a return, not just coverage. More true now than ever....

By James Gambrill, Wednesday, January 28, 2009