Australian tourism report reveals key tourist destinations

This week Tourism Media released results of a comprehensive study into Australian tourism trends through ongoing tracking of a web linked multimedia travel DVD-ROM.

Over the course of 2007, PleaseTakeMeTo.com released approximately 420,000 copies of its web linked multimedia travel DVD-ROM into the Australian market. Using Australian first weblink technology usage of the product has been carefully monitored allowing key data to be collected and analysed.

The special report developed for State Tourism Organisations provides a very accurate picture of what regions and locations users examined.

The PleaseTakeMeTo.com product is an extremely comprehensive collection of ‘rich media’ and nformation on the Australian tourism offer. It takes the form of a web site (www.PleaseTakeMeTo.com) and a web linked DVD-ROM. The report comes from the statistics tracked from the DVD-ROM usage only.

If the disk is accessed while the user is online, data can be collected on how it was used. The regions, locations and listings a user visited and the duration of that visit then become known quantities. This data is valuable in that it is not influenced by any outside factors. It represents a true picture of what locations interested the user and which of those then held their interest.

The DVD-ROM interface is geographically driven, with Australia divided into 69 ‘official’ tourism regions. Each of the 69 regions is treated equally, having a 60 second opening movie with original music and voice over describing the region.

Tourism Media Communications Director, Mr Todd Levi, said this represents a very substantial survey into which areas of their own country Australians are interested in as tourist destinations.

“While the product has been designed to encourage exploration, results show that the most visited regions and locations were those with existing high awareness,” Mr Levi said.

“This has substantial implications for those less well known areas wishing to attract increased tourist numbers.”

The largest numbers of disks were distributed in New South Wales, predominantly in the greater Sydney area so results were therefore skewed towards those locations with higher awareness in this market area.

“Sydney itself received the greatest number of visitors for any region and this reflects the natural tendency of people to look at where they live”.

“Going beyond that tendency, it becomes clear that the next most visited regions are those key tourist areas where there is a strong pre existing awareness”.

“After Sydney, the next most popular regions were the high profile tourism regions of Tropical North Queensland and the Gold Coast. Also ranking highly were the three tourism regions of Tasmania”.

“People are definitely discovering home and checking out what is on offer in their own backyard and there definitely are key regions people were visiting which should be key performance indicators for other tourism regions.

“For the first time, Australians are now spending more money as tourists overseas than foreigners are spending in Australia.”  “To get back into the black in an increasingly competitive global market, Australian tourism operators and marketers are being forced to innovate to keep the Australian tourist dollar here,” he said.

For lesser known regions and locations, generating awareness will be an ongoing challenge. For better known destinations, maintaining a high profile and relative position will be a major long term task.

Top 10 most visited locations and attractions:

Cairns, Tropical North Queensland

Broome, Australia North West

Sea World

Port Douglas, Tropical North Queensland

Bondi Beach, Sydney

Parramatta, Sydney

Australia Zoo, QLD Sunshine Coast

Port Arthur, Tasmania South

Manly, Sydney

Hayman Island

Top 10 least visited (yet amazing) locations and attractions

Blyth, ClareValley

Millmerran, Toowoomba and The Golden West

Banrock Station, Riverland

Penwortham, ClareValley

Norton Summit, Adelaide Hills

Malmsbury, Daylesford

Norah Head, Central Coast

Flinders Chase National Park, Kangaroo Island

Waikerie (Soaring Centre), Riverland

Norton Summit, Adelaide Hills

A Report by The Mole