December 5, 2018
South Burnett Regional Council has detailed new “industry engagement opportunities” ahead of Thursday night’s tourism “crisis meeting” at Wooroolin Hall.
A media release from Council’s Discover South Burnett tourism arm described a “redeveloped tiered structure of industry engagement opportunities for South Burnett tourism businesses and events”.
Cr Danita Potter said this was a significant evolution in the region’s destination marketing activity.
“The revised structure takes into account industry demand for more open and transparent opportunities to partner and collaboratively market with Discover South Burnett,” Cr Potter said.
“These opportunities will open the door for businesses to easily leverage off Discover South Burnett’s destination marketing activity and maximise their marketing expenditure.”
Council urged tourism operators to list on the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) for a cost of $200 a year to “facilitate participation in engagement opportunities”.
This fee is waived for events and not-for-profits.
The Council media release said tourism businesses and events with an ATDW profile would be automatically connected with Discover South Burnett and invited to increase their engagement for a direct spend of $50 or $100.
“Benefits vary between the different levels and specific criteria defines ‘Destination Events’,” the Council statement said.
“To meet the criteria for a Destination Event, the event must be held in the South Burnett Local Government Area (LGA), attract more than 1000 attendees and spend more than 50 per cent of the event’s marketing budget outside the South Burnett LGA.
“To further enable industry engagement, Discover South Burnett is also seeking ways that industry can leverage destination marketing for a lower spend, including the introduction of formatted panels to the marketing suite and redeveloping the South Burnett Touring Guide to reduce design costs borne by operators for production of ads.”
Cr Potter also encouraged operators to continue focussing on marketing activity and on producing high quality images.
“By sharing their story and passions, developing measurable objectives for seasonal reporting and working with other tourism businesses in collaborative marketing activity, operators can further reduce direct marketing costs whilst increasing destination marketing reach.”
Tourism operators voted on November 8 to meet at Wooroolin Hall from 6:00pm on December 6 to discuss a new path forward for 2019.
The decision was taken at a meeting in Kingaroy where speakers were highly critical of the Council’s marketing efforts since it broke away from Southern Queensland Country Tourism in August 2017.
- Related article: Crisis Meeting For Tourism Operators
Crisis Meeting for Tourism Operators is appropriate. How about first impressions are the best? Start at the basics. When you drive into Kingaroy and up Kingaroy St what you see, as you all know, is the shops without awnings. It looks like it’s all about to fall down. I am sure it’s not council’s problem re cost but surely they could put pressure on the owners to have the problem fixed.
If you are trying to lift the intake of tourists, make sure they enjoy what they see on arrival. After all, it is your shop window.