ESTIMATES COMMITTEE B

Thursday 21st June 2007

MEMBERS
Mr Dean
Mr Finch
Mrs Jamieson
Mrs Rattray-Wagner
Ms Ritchie
Mrs Smith (Chair)

Output group 1
Tourism

1.1 Tourism marketing

MARKETING BUDGETS

Mr FINCH - I want to talk about marketing, Minister, if I may and about this $18.5 million that is expended. I am curious about how we go about marketing Tasmania. Do we use our own officers? I would imagine we would contract out the marketing to the various areas that we want to market in? Can I get some idea of how much of that budget item is expended on outside, private, commercial companies and how we go about choosing those companies? Do we tender? Does every contract go out to tender?

Ms WRIEDT - Are you getting marketing and advertising confused?

Mr FINCH - Can you clarify it for me in answering the marketing component?

Ms MARIANI - You were talking about markets that we are in. Are you talking international markets?

Mr FINCH - No, no. Tell me about the $18.5 million. How do we expend that in marketing? Can you give me a breakdown?

Ms WRIEDT - Felicia can probably give you ballpark figures and explain to you how we do it.

Mr FINCH - Yes.

Ms MARIANI - The $18.5 million that you were referring to is not all spent on just going out there and advertising. There is a proportion of that money that is allocated to actual creative executions to media, getting things on television and in magazines, billboards, ranges of collateral, direct mail, online. There is a breakdown across a whole range of mediums that we use for our marketing activities. Obviously, we contract services to an advertising agency. We need to be realistic that we do not have the skills and expertise to manage that process internally. Every agency across the country uses the services of an advertising agency. So we do have a contracted relationship with a creative agency.

Mr FINCH - Just one?

Mr MARTIN - Yes.

Mr FINCH - Which one is that?

Ms WRIEDT - In Love Pty Ltd, in Sydney, Simon Reynolds.

Ms MARIANI - But we have no exclusive relationship with any one agency. We are contracted to the agency In Love to manage our brand advertising, if you will, and we contract a range of other agencies as well to provide support, for instance, for collateral production. We are working with local agencies in the development of a magazine that we are going to use in our intrastate campaign. So the contract that we have with our major advertising agency of record is not an exclusive contract and we leave ourselves free and open to work with anyone that we choose to.

We use the resources of the Media Buying House because, obviously, they have to negotiate rates for us with television, magazine, billboard et cetera. And we also use the services of the Media Planning Agency to help us map out how we will spend the money most effectively. Again, none of those relationships is exclusive and we maintain the right at any point in time in the year to work with any agency we see fit that is most suited to the campaign that we are about to undertake.

Mr FINCH - Can I get a breakdown of that $18.5 million? Can I get something from the department that gives me a run-down of how much goes to which area and how the $18.5 million is used?

Ms MARIANI - I will have to take that one on notice for you. We can give you that kind of breakdown.

Mr FINCH - I would like it as detailed as possible.

Ms MARIANI - We can break that down in terms of the issues around all of our television, magazine, outdoor, online, direct mail, special interest. There is a whole range but we can break the whole down for you, sure.

Mr FINCH - Please.

Ms WRIEDT - And that would give you figures for, say, G'Day USA, a ballpark figure on overall how much we spend on those direct trade marketing activities because they would come under that. Australian Tourism Exchange, which is the biggest trade show within the sector that is held every year, was just held in Brisbane so that would gather up all of that.

Mr FINCH - Okay, thank you. Could I get to a specific area of the market and that is retirees. On figures that were presented to me there are two million, fully funded retirees in Australia. They are going to grow by 100 000 each year for the next eight years. So are we addressing that market, retirees? They do have time and dollars to use the ships, they have the time to stay longer, they prefer the comfort zone of Tasmania compared with other areas. Are we addressing that retiree issue as far as attracting them to Tasmania is concerned?

Ms MARIANI - On a number of levels. First of all, what we do at our brand level we do quite broadly so we try to appeal to a whole range and a whole sector of age groups and demographic profiles across the Australian population. More specifically in answering your question about the retirees, the older segment of the market, under our special interest and niche category we do quite a lot; for instance, one of the major ways that we get to that market is to work with the caravanning and camping sector. We work extremely closely with the TT-Line in a number of cooperative programs that are targeted to that generation as well. In terms of our new strategy going forward, we have put a huge emphasis on and we are going to continue to look at how we create new programs to target the baby boomer sector. That is the growth retiree market.
[11.45 a.m.]
There really is not anyone in tourism at this point of time across the country who is appropriately targeting the baby boomer generation and this is something we have on our radar as part of our new directions to be able to create programs that are specifically targeting that market. We are also going to look at strategic alliances with, for instance, financial services companies who work with that market very closely and how we develop tourism programs with strategic partners that will allow us to gain access to that market quite efficiently.

Mr FINCH – Is the Association of Independent Retirees Australia-wide?

Ms MARIANI - They are a national body but each one has individual State branches. But this gets down to the point of strategic alliances that we want to start to build in order to communicate effectively with that group. You do not reach them through mass advertising. There are specifically targeted publications that they read but most importantly working with the retiree groups, the financial services groups for instance, the insurance groups that target retirees, are the ways we can get into their membership bases quite efficiently using their databases and using direct mail techniques.

CHAIR - There will be a plan for you, Mr Finch, by the time you retire.

Mr FINCH - About one million-plus visitors come from New Zealand to Australia each year. I am just wondering whether we have any specific targeting of New Zealand visitors to draw them to Tasmania. Do we have, for instance, any staff with Tourism Tasmania that work in New Zealand to draw them to Tasmania?

Ms WRIEDT - One of our area sales managers manages specifically –

Mr FINCH - One of the seven?

Ms WRIEDT - One of the nine, yes, has focused on New Zealand. Our Tas Temptation office also operates in New Zealand, to that marketplace.

Mr FINCH - Is that area manager located in New Zealand?

Ms MARIANI - No. They split their time. They are based here in Hobart with us but they spend quite a lot of time in the market in New Zealand. They move back and forth and travel back and forth as required.

Mr FINCH - Was it Tas Temptation staff you were just talking about?

Ms WRIEDT - Yes. The Tas Temptation office operates within New Zealand as well in taking bookings from New Zealand.

Mr FINCH - We market the Tas Temptations web site and address for them to come to us?

Ms WRIEDT - Yes.

Mr FINCH - Successfully?

Mrs JAMIESON - Yes. Through you, Minister - yes, having just come back from New Zealand. We could also learn quite a lot from New Zealand too. They smile, they were very hospitable. They smiled a lot, were very genuine, very giving of information.

CHAIR - Thank you. We are not here to promote New Zealand tourism.

Mr FINCH - I think at this stage that is all I want.