“New” official Australia tourism site launched.
Australia’s revamped official travel website www.australia.com aimed at attracting more visitors to Australia was launched yesterday at ATE 2007.
Giving a new look to the on line marketing of Australia overseas www.australia.com has been translated for different key markets, the site provides information about hotels, tours and holiday experiences throughout Australia, by drawing up to the minute information from the national and eight state based tourism websites and data warehouses.
www.australia.com also allows tourists to use the latest interactive mapping and intuitive navigation technology to navigate their way around the country with the click of a mouse, Google mapping, search and advertising platforms that allow consumers to drill down and find the information that they require to plan their trip – whether it is visa requirements, temperatures, distances or more detailed information on attractions, experiences and operator contacts
The www.australia.com gateway and international network was launched yesterday in English and Japanese and Tourism Australia will rolling out French, Italian, German, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Korean versions of the next few months.
Fran Bailey Federal Minister for Tourism said, “We need to be at the cutting edge of this global trend and it’s just good sense to be able to use the latest technology to make it easier and simpler for people to find out how they can get to Australia, what good deals they can get, and what are the good experiences they can have.”
The controversial “Where the bloody hell are you?” campaign will be run in parallel with the website, but Fran Bailey said that the tagline has been adapted slightly when translated for some countries, adding, “The tagline does not translate directly into Japanese or Korean so it’s picking up on the colloquial use of language in those countries, but the essence and the spirit, the friendliness and cheekiness of the tagline and the whole campaign is encompassed in the advertising in all countries in all of our major markets.”
Federal Minister of Small Business and Tourism, Fran Bailey, said 58% of international tourists to Australia used the internet for research in 2006, up from 22 per cent in 2003, the site connecting with 23,000 tourism businesses and intended to be a platform that industry can use to sell, as well as a source of tourist information.
Online bookings are not available from www.australia.com but many of the linked sites do offer this facility.
Fran Bailey also said, “The site also encourages tourists to stay longer and if we can add just three extra days to every tourist holiday, we can earn an extra A$1.5 billion in tourism exports.”
Tourism Australia MD Geoff Buckley said the previous version of the www.australia.com had been accessed by 7 million users last year, and 40 million pages had been downloaded annually.
He added that it was a very competitive field as there were now 100 million websites and 1 billion users globally, “so Tourism Australia needed to make sure that Australia stood out.”
Report by The Mole
John Alwyn-Jones
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