Tourism Australia to spend $1.7m in new push for incentive market
- MICEBTN archive stories issue 26
- Friday, 19 January 2007
A NEW international marketing campaign promoting the incentive market and a study of the convention and meetings industry are amongst major initiatives currently being undertaken by Tourism Australia.
TA also has used its international incentive trade show, Dreamtime, to launch a new study on the incentive market.
The new National Incentives Study was undertaken to increase understanding of the incentives sector in Australia.
The Incentive Study focused solely on the incentive market with key findings highlighting the economic contribution, source markets and destinations of the Australian incentive sector.
According to the study inbound incentive travel delivered 154,605 visitors in 2004 and contributed about A$304 million to Australia’s inbound tourism income. It also showed the average revenue received from an incentive visitor was three times that of a leisure visitor A$375 per day versus A$91 per day. However revenues did vary depending on the delegates’ country of origin. Participants from South East Asia spent around A$212 per day while European delegates spent up to A$725.
On average organisations operating in the incentive area submitted 68 proposals in 2004/2005 and achieved an annual success rate of 28 per cent.
The bulk of the business originated from North East Asia and South East Asia (over 70 per cent). Main individual countries were Japan and the United States.
The most popular state destination was Queensland followed by New South Wales.
Comparing the results of the latest study with the National Business Events Study TA found several major trends, most importantly the decision by international hoteliers to use their own networks to source incentives.
The extent of this change, which saw hotels attract 80,000 delegates in their own right, surprised TA director of marketing Ian Macfarlane.
“While it is understandable given the globalisation of major hotel groups I didn’t expect it to be quite so high,” he said.
Macfarlane said TA would run a three year global campaign starting next year to target the international incentive market.
The campaign is expected to kick off around next February/March and initially to have a budget of around A$1.7 million.
Extensive research is being undertaken into ‘the look’ of the campaign. It will address issues such as lack of product knowledge and will provide a sustainable platform, generate talk ability and provide a link for sales activity.
The campaign structure will include direct marketing, the web, public relations activities and invitee programs.
Macfarlane said the proposition for business travellers was very different to that of the leisure traveller. Campaigns had to convince key business decision makers of the benefits of travelling to Australia for their business.
Meanwhile a report on the convention market is currently being prepared and is expected to be delivered to the Tourism Australia Board in December.
Newly appointed TA managing director Geoff Buckley said the study would help determine what role the organisation should play in the convention area.
“We have undertaken a great deal of research and work in the incentive area and feel we now have a clear idea of our role and what we should be doing.
“We are now looking at a similar strategy for the convention area.”
TA is working with the Business Events Council of Australia (BECA), which is interviewing key players and preparing the report.
“This report will provide us feedback on what role the industry believe we should play in this area,” said Buckley.
