Focus on Food & Wine Industry Drives Tourism Australia's Campaign Success

In May Tourism Australia, the government authority charged with the promotion of Australia as an international travel destination, launched an $8.6 million campaign called Restaurant Australia focusing on the country's food and wine industry. 

The subject of the campaign was determined after a survey found that those who had not visited the country ranked its cuisine at the bottom of a list of possible travel destinations, while travelers who had visited ranked Australia only behind France and Italy for the quality of its food and wine. 

Of additional interest is that visitors from China, the U.S., India and the UK ranked Australia as their No. 1 destination for food and wine.

Given the only increasing number of travelers from China specifically, Restaurant Australia spent $3.16 million of its funds across Greater China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and India. The campaign included traditional TV and print media advertising, as well as a website with video content and streaming social feed from Twitter and Instagram on food events happening around Australia.

On November 14 the campaign hosted the "Invite the World to Dinner" event in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania. The event featured a menu created by Restaurant Australia Head Chefs Ben Shewry, Peter Gilmore, and Neil Perry and guests included 86 "cultural influencers" flown in for the event, including food and wine journalists, celebrity chefs, and TV personalities. It is estimated that the event had an influence reach of 400 million.

Travel website Skift wrote the following note on the campaign metrics: "at the culmination of the campaign, hashtag activity for #restaurantaustralia reached 21,441 contributions on Instagram and 28,155 on Twitter...on November 18, the last 100 tweets for #seeaustralia garnered 26,000 impressions...and #restaurantaustralia garnered 190,000 impressions. [The] campaign clocked in a 7.3 times discovery lift over its branded hashtag."

Of course the true impact of the campaign remains to be seen as visitors start booking tickets and help turn Australia into a true culinary destination.