What you need to know:

• Borders are open and Tourism Australia is spending big to woo international travellers back. When border reopening was announced, CMO Susan Coghill bought out Times Square, Piccadilly Circus and TV ads on the night of the Super Bowl in the US – despite no notice from the Federal Government.
• But TA spent the pandemic preparing a unique identifier to replace third party data in a bid to track user intent for retargeting in readiness for a cookieless world. It has been experimenting with propensity modelling locally and wants to target people with offers, experiences or hotels based on their search history.
• The UK and Singapore will be the first international markets for the first party data-based CX play.
• When 'fortress Australia' finally opened up, search spiked between 150 to 180 per cent, per TA's data. Search soared 183 per cent in Germany, 181 per cent in the UK, and 134 per cent in the US.
• Tourism Australia is preparing a new platform to replace ‘There’s Still Nothing Like Australia’, expected to be released around September.

Despite the Prime Minister famously being an ex-Tourism Australia chief, hence Scotty from Marketing, current CMO Susan Coghill says the organisation tasked with restarting Australia’s flatlined $60bn tourism economy found out that borders were reopening on the same day as everyone else.

So it had to scramble to get the biggest, boldest placements around the world in order to unleash a plan now two years in the making since Covid shut borders – and for many – subsequently pushing long distance travel way off the map, for the foreseeable future at least.

Kangaroos, sand and surf blanketed Piccadilly Circus in London and Times Square in New York. A TV spot played on the night of the Super Bowl in Los Angeles. Ads ran in Germany, France, Italy and Canada as part of the $40 million campaign with creative by the newly revamped CHEP Network. It was a “show of force”, Coghill says.

It needed to be. TA is now competing with peers across the world desperate to rebuild economies after two years largely without tourist dollars. Over the next 12 months, billions of government dollars will be spent globally trying to woo fewer and more cautious travellers to their particular shores.

TA has to pull every available lever if it is to succeed and even then Coghill says it will be a long, slow burn to recover to 2019 levels. If latest UK data is anything to go by, suggesting Australia is now firmly last on Brits' bucket list, she's right.

But it does have one major advantage that could help Australia overcome rivals more reliant on paid media: 17 million followers across social media, the largest social audience and following of any country in the world.

TA’s content strategy, spearheaded by www.australia.com, is extensive. Its PR team places hundreds of millions of dollars in earned media value each year. The post-pandemic tourist pitch has begun in earnest – and response levels are already starting to spike.

Crucially, Tourism Australia has locally piloted a unified identity solution for prospective travellers that will now be rolled out internationally. In the medium term, as Apple, Facebook, Google and global competition and privacy regulators drive major changes to data-driven advertising and permissible digital marketing practises, it could yet make the difference.

Converting demand spikes

The message was simple for Australia’s 21 February reopening, Coghill says: “Our doors are open. We want you to book and we want you to come down and experience our wonderful country as soon as you can.” Fully vaccinated people can enter without isolating, and the key group for local tourism’s success over the next year is expected to be the VFR segment – visiting friends and relatives. For two years, some people have been unable to visit relatives due to the border walls, while some citizens and residents gave up trying to get home altogether given the flight and border cap lottery, and a 'lock the doors' mentality, at least until mid last year.

Now border and quarantine restrictions have lifted, friends and family at least are keen to visit loved ones.

“The pent-up demand is high, particularly in markets like the US and UK,” says Coghill. “I think most markets, when they reopened after pandemic, saw that initial spike of interest in travel.”

Australia was no different. When the announcement was made, there were 150 to 180 per cent spikes in search. In Germany, searches were up 183 per cent. In the UK, they were 181 per cent, and in the US, 134 per cent. 

In all tourism markets, experience has shown there's an initial bounce that peters out until about 50 per cent capacity. TA is seeing booking patterns change as people learn to be more flexible. The same short-term bounce is expected here, too, but Australia has an advantage – it is perceived as a great place for a Covid or health-conscious traveller.

“We're certainly seeing shifts in how people book holidays, post pandemic. They are booking a little closer to travel time so that they have perhaps a little more certainty about travel conditions,” Coghill says.

“Our outdoor lifestyle and culture, whether it is our beaches, our outback or even our cities with that great outdoor lifestyle, is also really appealing at this time in terms of how people want to travel, in terms of safety and health,” she suggests.

The most recent $40m campaign is likely to be followed up by a similarly hefty budget later this year, with potentially more media spend if the market fails to respond. TA accepts the road ahead will be difficult and expensive: Its own modelling suggests tourist numbers won’t reach 2019 levels until 2024 or 2025.

First party push

Meanwhile, TA has been pushing ahead with a big identity project to leverage the advantages of digital media to improve customer experience, acquisition and retention. The UK and Singapore will be the first international test markets. TA’s Head of Digital Strategy and Transformation, Paul Bailey, previously told Mi3 the organisation planned to use its own unique identifier to replace third party data and cookies. That ambition still stands, although Google's flipfloppery and global regulatory uncertainty means nothing can be taken for granted.

“We've had a successful proof of concept in the domestic market. We had really great results in how we reengaged and retargeted audiences [that visited] Australia.com, our website,” Coghill says. The solution involves a propensity model, customer data platform, and major investment based on how users behave on the site.

“When customers came to our website, understanding and looking at the various signals that they were giving off to understand where they were in the customer journey… What pages were they coming into? Where were they staying? What part of the website were they staying longest, for example, their engagement levels and which are operators were they engaging with? Were they looking at hotels? Were they looking at our map, for example?”

The identifier will, ideally, mean TA can retarget those looking to book a holiday to Australia with either new and different places to visit, hotels, experiences or direct marketplaces to book a product. But there are challenges – privacy law changes and multiple markets, for example. TA has no direct sight of the actual sale, which is made through one of the third-party travel operators.

“Part of the project is going, 'how do we close the loop with that data and that information such that we can have full visibility?'” Coghill says.

“[We are] gathering information on consumers, getting them to sign up and sign in and hand us their identity data, making sure then that we can get a full picture of where they've been on the site and what information they're looking for. It's  one of a few different projects that we're looking at to prepare for the end of cookies and increase privacy. I think all brands are trying to find their way through the current Wild West of that situation.”

Keep dreaming

When the borders shut, TA’s content machine shifted through the gears, with australia.com and its social presence the key drivers to keep people "dreaming" of holidays and freedom amid a real world dearth of both.

“We felt it was important to stay in touch with consumers, keep the dream of the Australian holiday alive,” Coghill says. Tourism Australia held 32 livestream events across the country over a single weekend, showing the best places to visit, cultural experiences, food to eat and wine to drink. There have also been "8D" video and audio experiences, including some produced with Australian electronic music duo Flight Facilities.

Meanwhile, TA is also working to try and boost the impact of its resellers – travel agents – through the Aussie Specialist Program. “I think in a typical year we train 30 to 40,000 [agents], something like that," says Coghill. "During lockdown, that number spiked to something like 80,000."

Headline numbers

TA’s PR team has been the strongest performer over the past couple of years, according to Coghill.

“Believe it or not, we have managed to still get over $300 million in earned media value over the past year – and it was a similar number the year before, which I think is phenomenal for a country when our borders are closed.”

Likewise, social media is a massive lever. Australia’s tourism body has the largest social following of any in the world, “and probably one of the most highly engaged audiences as well,” Coghill says. Next on the roadmap is TikTok and, some may say optimistically, TA has also added a team for China’s WeChat platform. “That’s an incredibly important channel for us,” says Coghill.

She's gong to need every last ounce of value, because competition has never been stronger from the likes of New Zealand, Japan and US states like California and Hawaii in particular. “They’ve been more creative than we’ve ever seen… it’s a very competitive, very cluttered category,” Coghill says. “It’s important that we be as distinctive and uniquely Australian as possible [to cut through]."

New campaign coming

For much of the last year, TA has been developing the next big chapter of Australian tourism. In March 2020, the organisation unveiled its ‘There’s Still Nothing Like Australia’ campaign, which built on the near decade-old ‘There’s Nothing Like Australia’ campaign. Unfortunately, it came as the pandemic spread. Now, it is working with M&C Saatchi on its next instalment. 

“We're in the production process, building out that narrative and the entire launch campaign. In true TA style it will be highly creative and surprising way to tell our brand story,” Coghill says. It’s expected to be released around September.

“It’s a little bit about finding the opportunity to get out and film in the far corners of our country. Doing a Tourism Australia shoot is not a small project," she says. We've got to make sure that it's just amazing world class quality.” 

And it will need to be more effective and more powerful than anything seen to date to ensure Australia's tourism economy isn't asking where the bloody hell everyone is for years to come.