During May – July this year Goldfields Tourism rolled out a major brand campaign in South Australia and southern NSW including Canberra.  Designed to increase awareness of the region in these important interstate markets this first campaign burst has now concluded and the results were great.  For more information on the results refer to the August newsletter.

Goldfields Tourism is keen to build on the success of the May-July activity and intends to roll out another online campaign in November this year.  This campaign will run interstate, utilising key online media to continue to reinforce the Goldfields message and offer operator deals and packages.  The advertisement will utilise the very eye-catching campaign designs to encourage consumers to click through to visitgoldfields.com.au for find out more information and view special deals and packages.

Advertising space will be very reasonably priced and present some great opportunities for operators to market to important interstate markets.  More information will be available soon, but if you are interested please register your interest with Jo Pincus as participation numbers will be limited.

With all campaign and marketing activity developed by Goldfields Tourism you’ll always hear us mention the need for a visitvictoria.com product listing.  Why do we want you to do this?

visitvictoria.com is the official consumer website for Tourism Victoria and over the last 12 months received over 6.5 million visits and 30.8 million page views from consumers.  Goldfields Tourism’s consumer website www.visitgoldfields.com.au sits within visitvictoria.com as it is THE website for consumers considering and planning a holiday in Victoria.

In any campaign activity we direct consumers to visitgoldfields.com.au for more information, so this site it is a vital link in any Goldfields marketing activity.  Your product listing is then ready to be viewed by interested consumers. Listings are a key factor in any advertising campaign as they contain detailed information and images on your business, hot links to your own website and if relevant provide hot links directly from campaign activity.

• A standard product listing is only $250 per year (incl. GST) and businesses accredited through programs endorsed by the Tourism Accreditation Australia Ltd are eligible to receive a discount of $150, so only pay $100 per year (incl. GST).
• Product listings are FREE for events and not-for-profit organisations.
• Product listings can have their information stored with the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW), accessed by travel and tourism websites across Australia including www.australia.com and www.pleasetakemeto.com. This FREE service offers a great opportunity to extend the reach of your listing and target a wider domestic and international market.  
• A visitvictoria.com product listing is self authoring so you have complete control of your listing at all times.  There are no ongoing costs or charges to up-date or adjust your listing. 
• The My Statistics section allows business product listings to monitor the number of visits and enquiries to their listing.
• A listing provides a cost effective and easy alternative to those operators not yet ready for their own website.
• If you already have your own website, you can set up hot links within your product listing directly to your own website.

By taking a listing you are eligible to participate in the full range of Goldfields Tourism marketing activities including:

• All brand campaign activities.
• Seasonal online enewletters to a database of 2,300+ consumers.
• Highlighted on the Goldfields emap, currently in development, the emap will be an exciting online holiday planning tool.

Most importantly your $250 listing fee is returned to Goldfields Tourism by Tourism Victoria.  This money is invested directly back into campaign activity and supports other marketing activity such as the appointment of a dedicated public relations consultant.  As such, every product listing helps our overall marketing activities in many ways. 

Your product listing is not only providing useful information to consumers looking to holiday in the region, it is also helping us spread the word about the region by directly supporting campaign activity. 

Dedicated Public Relations for the Goldfields

Goldfields Tourism is excited to announce the recent appointment of Q Strategies to support brand campaign activity and maximise the region’s profile in our target markets.  Q Strategies is ably qualified for the task having worked extensively in the tourism industry including managing public relations campaigns for Melbourne and Surrounds Marketing, Grampians Tourism and Mornington Peninsula Tourism.  Q Strategies not only has experience in the travel and leisure industry they also bring strong contacts and knowledge of the arts sector, which is a perfect tie in with our Leave a Little Richer marketing strategy. 

Over the next month or so Q Strategies will be working with the Goldfields Tourism committee to develop a strategy and then begin to roll out activity and work with important media contacts to maximise our exposure.  The appointment is until end of June 2010 and we expect the strategy to include a number of new and exciting activities for our region.  We will keep our tourism community updated on activities and opportunities to participate as more information becomes available.

You can assist our Public Relations program by passing on news on anything new, interesting or a bit different in your area.  Is there a new event starting up, does your village hold a specialty niche event, does your business offer something special or different for visitors, are you or do you know of a specialty new product/business starting up.  Anything at all that you think will help make the Goldfields stand out and offer an interesting and different news story we want to hear about it.  Please send your information to Jo Pincus.

Goldfields Tourism recently received funding from Tourism Victoria to benchmark the delivery of services by tourism businesses and conduct a number of Tourism Excellence Workshops across the region.

Tourism Audit Services, a dedicated tourism audit business, has been engaged to conduct customer care audits as part of the State Government’s Tourism Excellence Program, an initiative that promotes and acknowledges good customer service.

Goldfields Tourism decided this opportunity should be made available to a number of the region’s villages and as a result Maldon, Creswick/Clunes, Maryborough and Heathcote were identified to benefit from this initial round of funding.  Over the next 12 months businesses are visited by “mystery shoppers” as part of the confidential customer care audit process.  The purpose is not to find fault, but to independently and objectively measure, track and assess the actual customer experience being delivered in our region.  This process will provide an honest snapshot of how we are performing.  We look forward to the audit process being a positive and rewarding experience for all our tourism stakeholders in the Goldfields region.

The audit process examines all facets of the day- to- day operations of a business on any given day, including first impressions, presentation, quality of the overall experience and the likelihood of return visitation and recommendation to others.  Because mystery shoppers are utilised, there is no disruption to the normal operations of the business.  It is business as usual.

To date one “cycle” has been conducted in the identified villages and it has proved to be a very useful process for those businesses that received a customer care mystery shopper and follow-up report.   If you are interested in finding out any more about the customer care audit process please contact Jo Pincus.

If you would like to find out more about any of the above activities, including how you can be involved, or register on a database to receive updates on marketing opportunities please contact Goldfields Tourism Project Manager, Jo Pincus at see1@vic.australis.com.au

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