TOURISM VICTORIA ANNUAL REPORT

E-MARKETING
Tourism Victoria uses online
communications to help
market Victoria as a premium
tourist destination to Australian
and international travellers.
Tourism Victoria has a range of
websites, including visitvictoria.com,
backpackvictoria.com, skivic.com and
visitmelbourne.com plus its nine English
language and seven foreign language
variants: Korean, Japanese, Chinese
(simplified), Chinese (traditional),
German, French and Italian.
Tourism Victoria’s corporate website
is tourismvictoria.com.au
Consumer Websites
In the year to 30 June 2008, Tourism
Victoria’s consumer websites recorded
just under 5.2 million visits. Over the
same period, visitors viewed almost
30 million pages.
Tourism Victoria ensures that all
marketing campaigns have an
integrated online component,
comprising dedicated campaign
pages on visitvictoria.com, call centre
activity through the Victorian Tourism
Information Service and e-marketing
promotions including email, banner
advertising, search engine marketing
and other online initiatives.
According to Hitwise Australia, an online
measurement company, visitvictoria.com
outperformed all other state and federal
tourism websites in terms of its share of
Australian internet audience for 10 of the
12 months of the financial year. Hitwise,
reports on more than 500,000 websites
across more than 160 industries.
visitvictoria.com
outperformed all
other state and federal
tourism websites
In February 2008, Tourism Victoria
launched a video portal on visitvictoria.
com, which features a growing
collection of short videos highlighting
Victorian destinations, attractions,
aboriginal culture and identities.
More than 10,000 videos per month
are being viewed from the portal.
Another highlight was the refresh of
Tourism Victoria’s foreign language
websites and an increased level of search
engine marketing and improved search
engine optimisation. This was particularly
effective for the China market where
website visitor numbers increased by
76 per cent from 22,852 in 2006–07
to 97,121 in 2007–08.
E-marketing activities during the year
included search engine marketing
campaigns viewed by more than
35 millions consumers worldwide which
generated more than 200,000 visitors
to Tourism Victoria’s consumer websites.
This activity included international search
marketing campaigns in United Kingdom,
Germany, Korea, India, Japan, China and
New Zealand, electronic direct mail
and e-newsletter campaigns with the
ongoing development of eight specialised
consumer e-newsletters distributed
to more than 33,000 consumers on a
regular basis and a continued focus on
search engine optimisation across the
entire consumer website.
Tourism Victoria also commenced
a program to encourage tourism
operators to provide online booking
facilities to consumers. In 2007,
close to 70 per cent of international
visitors to Victoria used the internet
to research their visit and 43 per cent
booked some component of their
visit online. At present, less than
15 per cent of the industry offer
online booking to consumers.
This program provides a range of
industry training workshops and guides
to increase the online competitiveness
of the Victorian industry.
Tourism Victoria will also be
implementing some new technology
to allow consumers to book online
through visitvictoria.com using operator
inventory in a wide range of existing
online booking and property
management systems.
Australian Tourism
Data Warehouse
Tourism Victoria’s continued involvement
in the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse
ensures that Victorian tourism businesses
are represented on other travel and
tourism websites, including Tourism
Australia’s australia.com. Tourism Victoria
assumed the management of some
destination content on australia.com
to ensure consistent messages reach
international audiences.
Corporate Website
In the year to 30 June 2008,
Tourism Victoria’s corporate website
recorded 332,000 visits. During the
same period, visitors viewed more than
1.8 million pages, an increase of almost
923,000 pages.
Marketing Victoria online, Federation Square, Melbourne.
46 MARKETING