TOURISM VICTORIA ANNUAL REPORT

• Tourism Victoria, in partnership
with Melbourne Airport, negotiated
for a range of key Melbourne and
regional destinations to be featured
in a new Bollywood film Main aur
Mrs Khanna. This follows on from
the success of two Bollywood films
Salaam Namaste in 2005 and Chak
de India in 2006 which were shot in
Victoria and reached audiences of
400 and 300 million respectively.
Japan
• The high quality travel show, Tabi-
Salad, which is a popular weekly
television program highlighted
Victoria. Two episodes of the program
aired in April 2008 to a cumulative
audience of more than 8 million
households. The program featured
Victoria’s nature and food and wine
experiences through the eyes of a
well-known female photographer, and
focused on Melbourne, Yarra Valley,
Mornington Peninsula and the Great
Ocean Road.
North America
• Tourism Victoria entered into
the Aussie Week/Short Breaks
partnership with Tourism Australia,
Tourism New South Wales and
Tourism Queensland. The campaign
was aimed at altering the long-haul
perceptions of Australia amongst a
selected audience of US travellers.
Victoria was well positioned in
the campaign with sophisticated
experiences in Melbourne and
Victoria's easily accessible regions.
Key highlights of the campaign
included the CBS half-hour special
advertorial of AussieWeek featuring
videos from the 100 winners. The
program had eight prime time
airings from January to March on
four key demographic CBS stations
in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
January saw record sales for Qantas
and arrivals to Australia from the
North America were up 14 per cent
compared to the same time for the
previous year.
France
• Tourism Victoria partnered with
Cathay Pacific to develop a
dedicated Victoria microsite to
highlight Melbourne and Victoria’s
nature experiences on one of the
leading French online travel sites
GOvoyages.com. This site attracts
1.5 million users per month. As
GOvoyages.com also featured
the campaign on their homepage
using a skyscraper and banner
advertisements the awareness
generated for Melbourne and
Victoria was outstanding.
Germany
• In conjunction with Travelworks
Tourism Victoria undertook a
Working Holiday Visa competition
which included production of a
dedicated website: melbourne-vibez.
de, advertorials in UNICUM (print
run: 415,000) and UNICUMabi
(print run: 250,000), which are
free magazines for students and
high school graduates, distributed
in high schools and universities.
The competition also featured in
Unicum Newsletter for students
(30,000 subscribers) and high school
graduates (10,000 subscribers) and
banner advertising on websites of
various affiliate partners.
Shopping in Melbourne. Photo: Left Mark Chew, Right Robert Blackburn.
36 MARKETING