Authentic Holiday Films
The World War II epic "Australia", which is mostly set in Western Australia and Darwin may attract more international visitors to the empty flat plains, gushing waterfalls and dusty Outback towns depicted in the movie, which is already hailed for its cinematography and the pairing of two of Australia’s best known actors.
Tourism Australia, the national tourism board, is spending $26 million on an advertising campaign to coincide with the release of the movie later this month. "We knew that this huge film would create a wave of publicity that would put the country in the spotlight around the globe," said Geoff Buckley, managing director of Tourism Australia. "And we found that the film's story had a remarkable resonance for what we do marketing the country as a travel destination."
Western Australia and the Northern Territory have released their own marketing campaigns to draw people who are inspired by the movie to the outback areas featured in the film. And a number of tour operators are already offering tours to the Kimberley region based on the movie.
However other areas in Australia that feature similar rugged outback landscapes, such as the Murray/Darling Basin West of Sydney, where the legendary “Mad Max” movies were filmed, which made Mel Gibson an international star, as well as Australia’s most popular tourist destination Uluru, near Alice Springs, are also hoping for a slice of the pie, particularly since they may be more accessible from the tourist hubs of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide than the Kimberley region.
Individual businesses who do not have the budget of state governments and the national tourism board may also put themselves on the map, or rather the web, by using the popular video platform YouTube. The video sharing network has become such an important medium that some of the primary debates between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton were hosted on the Google-owned network, many of the political ads during the presidential campaign were never shown on TV but released only on YouTube, where they were picked up by TV networks, and President-elect Barack Obama now releases his weekly addresses on YouTube.
Tourism companies with a limited budget may have viral videos created of their tours and destinations and distribute them on YouTube, My Space, Facebook, Yahoo and other Video-sharing networks at a minimal cost. Authentic Holiday Films, a video production company that specialises in promoting tourism through video and recently promoted the Darling River for the Outback New South Wales Tourism Organisation, may create a 3-5min video for $1399.
"Video footage helps our customers to really picture themselves on a cruise or tour far more effectively than any still picture will ever do," says APT's general manager of business development, Michelle Cox.
"You can see photos of Uluru or Kata Tjuta but you don't see people sitting down with indigenous people and painting, or sitting around a campfire and swapping stories. It's more about the experience when you go to a destination."
Google Australia's head of travel, Claire Hatton, says the search engine is the first point consumers go to when they think about booking a holiday.
"People use it to dream, plan and purchase - all the way through. There's a 'purchase funnel' process that videos fit into.
Cox says video footage works well from a business perspective, too.
"They offer a new medium at a really minimal cost (and allow us) to explore an area that is still developing. The opportunities out there are endless. We are only starting to grapple with it and what we can do."
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
