Tourism Massachusetts CEO says they are here to stay

During an exclusive interview with The Mole, Tourism Massachusetts CEO William MacDougall confirmed the leading US tourism State’s long term commitment to the Australia and New Zealand marketplaces, demonstrated by the appointment of Gate 7 and Jo-Anne Palmer her team to represent the State in Australia and New Zealand.

Commenting that he viewed Australia and New Zealand as important to Massachusetts as France and Italy, he said, “I believe that there is tremendous potential to increase Australian and New Zealand visitation to Massachusetts to levels we enjoy from other international markets”.

“30% of Australian travellers to the United States visit New York City and Boston is just over three hours drive or a one hour flight away, yet only 5% of Australian travellers currently spend time in Massachusetts and we aim to change that.”  

“Massachusetts is represented in 33 countries via 13 representation firms and the appointment of Gate 7 and the launch of the account in Australia and New Zealand is a very exciting and significant step for Massachusetts”

“Surprisingly New York and not Los Angeses is the number one entry point into the US for Australians and this fundamental, along with a range of other issues grabbed our attention in considering marketing Massachusetts in Australia and New Zealand – there is no language barrier; the travel and tourism business operates in a very similar manner to other key markets for us including the UK and Canada and the rules and structure of the business are similar”.

“Historically, we have been a destination that has always been out front in destination marketing, we were the first in Japan, we are in China and we believe that Australia is a significant missing piece of our global business puzzle and that is being corrected now, with in the longer term India being next”.

“We have appointed Gate 7 here as our representative through a very rigorous tender process and they will be initially be undertaking substantial PR activity to build exposure, with industry training and possibly a specialist agents programme on the agenda, because we believe that the trade is critical in this process”.

“The number of consumers in Australia and New Zealand that book the USA through agents is very high and we want to work with the trade to increase the yield by getting agents to get their clients to consider Massachusetts”.   “At the same time, developing the right product is essential and while a consumer can do pretty well anything on the internet we want to make sure they have the right experience through bringing the right product to market through wholesalers”.

“The timing of our launch here is perfect for us as all the US brochures are now being finalised and initially we want to expand the product by selling more of what they already have, as there has been no marketing push for Massachusetts in the past”.  

In closing Bill said, “This is a long term commitment, you will not see us come and go and we have missed too many opportunities here”. “We want to get our message out to a very targeted group of people and sell that product to them and I anticipate seeing a 5% to 7% growth from this market in the first year from the 37,000 that visit Massachusetts currently”.

Further information on Massachusetts can be obtained from Gate7 on from a very special and excellent experience Massachusetts TV and video clip site and their regular web site www.usamass.com, www.usamass.tv and www.mass-vacation.com

Report and Interview by The Mole