in the marketing strategy used by Tourism Queensland
August 31, 2012
The South Burnett Wine Industry Association is concerned that the newly-formed “Super RTO” tourism group covering the South Burnett, Toowoomba, Southern Downs and Granite Belt will see ten years of hard work by local tourism operators to build “South Burnett brand awareness” washed away.
And it will seek a meeting with Member for Nanango Deb Frecklington to discuss getting extra funding to help the South Burnett maintain its tourism identity.
SBWIA President Jason Kinsella said today that while the wine industry is happy to work with any group on anything that will help grow the region’s tourism industry, it believes the South Burnett will lose its “mind share” with tourists under the new Super RTO arrangement without special assistance.
“Over the last decade, South Burnett tourism operators have worked very hard to build awareness of our region with tourists,” he said.
“This was because until fairly recently, Tourism Queensland’s marketing focus was on “destinational tourism” – that is, you go to place A to experience B, C and D.
“As a result, many organisations from our Council down to individual tourism operators have worked very hard on encouraging tourists to think of the South Burnett as a great destination to visit. And we built on our real strengths: the Bunya Mountains, two terrific inland lakes, lots of great festivals and a wine industry that’s different from any other wine region in the country.
“But now Tourism Queensland have thrown that idea overboard and their new marketing strategy is “experiential tourism” – things like food and wine journeys, birdwatching journeys and bushwalking journeys where a tourist might need to travel through several destination areas to experience them all.”
Mr Kinsella said that this change in focus posed a major problem for the South Burnett because the new Super RTO now covered the State’s two largest wine regions (ie Granite Belt and South Burnett).
And they were not only direct competitors, but were also 300km apart.
“What I think will happen,” he said, “is that the new RTO may decide to promote, say, a wine trail experience. But by sheer force of numbers, the Granite Belt will get a much bigger share of attention in that kind of promotion than we would.
“We might produce more wine than the Granite Belt, but we only have about 25 per cent of the cellar door numbers. So naturally, you’d see the bulk of the ads in that kind of promotion featuring Granite Belt wineries.
“But how many tourists would decide they’d like to travel 300km from the Granite Belt to Kingaroy or Moffatdale to pursue that kind of Super RTO wine trail? My guess is few, if any. And that wouldn’t just hurt our members – it would hurt all our region’s tourism operators.”
Concerns about the same issue were also expressed by South Burnett Tourism Association President Kathy Davis (Hillview Cottages).
Speaking to southburnett.biz in September last year, she said that the change in focus by Tourism Queensland from “destination” to “experiential” marketing had already hurt the South Burnett region, particularly the winding back of the South-East Queensland Country marketing campaign.
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