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TOURISM TASMANIA: Embrace being a winter warrior as part of the new season’s marketing campaign
With Easter now behind us (and what an Easter it was!) we turn our attention to the cooler months and to an underrated yet magical time of the year in Tasmania. Winter does not get the credit it deserves as a season in our summer-loving country, this may be due to the fact that in Australia our winters don’t get as cold as those in the Northern Hemisphere, so we tend not to get winter right, which is a shame as it has so much to offer, and in Tasmania it’s when we are our most distinct.
To grow a sustainable visitor economy, we need to reduce the extremes of seasonality by embracing all our seasons and offering something truly different in winter than can be experienced any other time of year. After all, the light is different, the water is clearer, the oysters more plump, the southern lights more prominent and the days are crisp. It’s also when our creative and adventurous side comes out to play. When we launched Come down for Air, the aspiration was to play like a culture brand not like a traditional tourism brand, enabling us to tap into a deeper psyche and position Tasmania as more than just another holiday destination, rather a place where you can feel more human. Winter delivers that in spades. The Off Season is our invitation for visitors to enjoy all that a winter in Tasmania has to offer. It’s a play on words that can achieve for Tasmania what Australia Day has done for lamb, that is, to embed in the Australian psyche and culture that a Tasmanian winter is a must-do experience. In the lead up to our winter campaign launch, we have been working with operators to present a consolidated and whole-state approach, which will help build a compelling reason to chase winter not summer. We also think The Off Season has legs and are really excited about it being a concept we can collectively build on year after year and importantly allows us to smooth out traditional seasonality and encourage strong visitation all year round. The strategy for this year is to launch The Off Season and embed the concept for industry, Tasmanians and mainland Australia. We are competing in a cluttered destination marketing environment at the moment, with amazing deals, flights and offers in the market which are hard to beat. We need to challenge the status quo and drive a strategy and program that cuts through this noise and entice visitation to Tasmania rather than the sunny tropics. To do this we need to be bold, distinct and use some unconventional marketing techniques. A collective Tasmanian voice rallying around The Off Season will help the message cut through and build greater meaning and connection.
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Having our industry connected into The Off Season is a win, win, win. It allows us to amplify the message and provide different story angles that can connect with potential customers and cut through busy advertising messages. For our industry, it’s an opportunity to connect more closely with our work, leverage our investments and provide visitors with a totally different experience than they would get in the warmer months. We want our customers to know that Tasmania offers a unique winter experience they can’t get anywhere else.
WE HAVE FEWER RESERVATIONS IN WINTER
We have invited operators to share with us their Off Season experiences that we can include through the campaign. These can range from Off Season inspired menu items or special and distinct winter experiences through to quirky or exclusive one-off opportunities. The more compelling, distinct and intriguing the experience we can collectively offer, the more cut through it will have with our visitors and the more buzz we can create. A collective and shared approach will allow us to stand greater than the sum of our parts and be more effective at enticing mainlanders to Tasmania this winter. If you have not already submitted an expression of interest in The Off Season and would like to do so please register via our www.tourismtasmania.com. au. The closing date for EOIs is Monday, 24 May. We will be launching The Off Season in the last week in April and will run through to the end of August.
