Bingle goes down well in the West, but not in Asia

The Australian reports today that the controversial “Where The Bloody Hell Are You” campaign has been a hit in North America and the UK, and Britons, but has fallen flat on its nose with the Chinese, who decided to come here in increasing numbers anyway.

Tourism Australia polls on the campaign found that 79% of Brits and 81% of Americans could recall hearing something about Australia recently and of these Brits, 48% were prepared to do something about it, either visiting www.australia.com or a travel agent, compared with 32% who had not seen the tourism advertisement starring controversial bikini clad Aussie model Lara Bingle.

Americans were only slightly less motivated to visit www.australia.com or a travel agent at 47%, with a healthy 27%  more than those who were unaware of the Ms Bingle.

In China the story was very different, with Ms Bingle being recalled by only 30%, with 28% taking action, 18% higher than those who were unaware of the campaign.

In the meantime, tourism from China increased by nearly 10% and The Mole wonders if they had featured China’s version of Lara Bingle, bikini clad on the ad what the response might have been!

In Japan, things looked better than China but well behind the UK and USA, with 63% of Japanese recalling hearing something about Australia recently, of which 43% took action, 18% higher than those who had not heard Bingle’s call, “Where The Bloody Hell Are You?” 

In Korea though the recall rate was much higher at 70%. 

While heavily criticised here in Aus, and in particular by State Governments, particularly NSW and Queensland, the campaign is considered by Tourism Australia and the trade overseas to have been highly successful, with traffic on the www.australia.com website having increased by 30% since it started nearly a year ago, with Federal Tourism Minister Fran Bailey telling The Australian that the results were strong and showed that the obsession with the Japanese market should be moderated, with some of that passion directed to emerging markets such as India and the Middle East.   

She added, “We’ve had a 20% drop in Japanese tourism in the month of January, and we have to look at what happened there”, adding, “In spite of all the obstacles, the yield that we’ve been getting out of the Japanese market has actually slightly increased.”

In overall terms, incoming tourism to Australia grew by 0.6% in 2006 to a record 5.5 million people, with a notable 8.2% increase from China and 4.2% growth from South Korea.  There were 308,000 tourists from China, but Japanese tourism slumped 5%, partly due to the strengthening Australian dollar, particularly at the time last April, when major holiday packages were being put together.

Ms Bailey also added that the rise of the dollar against the yen of 50% over the past five years has not helped, along with a rise in short-haul holidays from Japan to China and South Korea.

Ms Bailey said, “We need to look outside the square” when it comes to marketing Australia internationally.”  “We’ve got a really big push on India and China…..we really need a greater focus there”.

“We are setting up a tourism office in India and the Chinese market has huge potential………….I see the Middle East, especially Dubai, as being a major hub, I think the growth potential there is huge.”

Report by The Mole with material from The Australian