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There’s Nothing Like Australia is Tourism Australia’s global brand platform, highlighting some of the very best attractions and experiences Australia has to offer.

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Acknowledgement of Country

We acknowledge the Traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Owners of the land, sea and waters of the Australian continent, and recognise their custodianship of culture and Country for over 60,000 years.

*Disclaimer:  The information on this website is presented in good faith and on the basis that Tourism Australia, nor their agents or employees, are liable (whether by reason of error, omission, negligence, lack of care or otherwise) to any person for any damage or loss whatsoever which has occurred or may occur in relation to that person taking or not taking (as the case may be) action in respect of any statement, information or advice given in this website. Tourism Australia wishes to advise people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent that this website may contain images of persons now deceased.

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Thirty years of Tourism Australia: A history of iconic ads

The Dundee Returns campaign, launched today in the US during the Super Bowl , marks the biggest spend from Tourism Australia in any single overseas market at $36 million.

The body has a history of iconic advertising, from Paul Hogan saying G'day, to Lara Bingle yelling 'Where the bloody hell are you?'. We take a look at 30 years of tourism ads.

1984 – 1989: Feel the Wonder Down Under 2004 – 2006: Australia. A Different Light 2006 – 2008: A Uniquely Australian Invitation 2008 – 2009: Come Walkabout 2010 – Present: There’s Nothing Like Australia

Feel the Wonder Down Under: 1984 – 1989 The first Australian Tourist Commission television commercial featuring Paul Hogan aired on the west coast of the USA in January 1984. Hogan invited Americans to “Come and say G’day” and experience Australia’s beaches, outback, cities and relaxed lifestyle, adding the classic line, “I’ll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you” as well as setting up Australia as the friendliest place in the world.

Responses averaged 1,500 a day and visa applications increased by 40%. The ‘Shrimp’ advertisement is now recognised as a classic in the world of advertising. Current Tourism Australia CMO Lisa Ronson tells AdNews Hogan put Australia on the map and is the "godfather of Australian tourism".

Australia. A Different Light: 2004 – 2006 ‘Australia. A different light.’ was the first campaign released under the new branding featuring the iconic kangaroo bounding in the sun. It aimed to draw on the link between the light, the land, and life in Australia.

A series of TV ads were launched showing Australia “through the eyes” of individuals including singer Delta Goodrem, commentator and cricketing legend Richie Benaud, poet Les Murray, artists Barbara Weir and Brett Whiteley and media personality Jono Coleman. 

A Uniquely Australian Invitation: 2006 – 2008 The campaign was uniquely Australian in tone and character and featured the tagline, “Where the Bloody Hell are you?” which catapulted Lara Bingle into the limelight.

Come Walkabout: 2008 – 2009 In 2008, the Australian writer, producer and director Baz Luhrmann produced a destination campaign which leveraged the release of Australia the movie.

Central to the campaign was the concept of ‘walkabout’ – a uniquely Australian concept that is steeped in traditional Aboriginal culture.

There’s Nothing Like Australia: 2010 – Present This has been the ongoing slogan for TA’s overarching marketing for eight years.

Restaurant Australia -   TA has dropped close to $70 million on this campaign since it launched. It was created in 2015 in response to the growing demand globally for food and wine as part of the travel experience. It looks to close the gap between perceptions of what Australia has to offer and the reality of our world-class food and wine offering.

Aquatic and Coastal - TA has dropped close to $50 million on this campaign For the first time this 2016 campaign put Australia’s coast and water at the centre of a campaign. It was fronted by Chris Hemsworth.

Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop me a line at [email protected]

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Tourism Australia launches new ad to lure international visitors ahead of borders opening

By Lucia Hawley | 2 years ago

Tourism Australia has launched a major international campaign to entice tourists back ahead of border openings.

The ad marks the first big international tourism campaign in two years and is set to the catchy slogan "Don't go small. Go Australia".

Phillipa Harrison, managing director of Tourism Australia, discussed the move on Weekend Today, calling it "a moment we have been waiting for for two years."

READ MORE: Everything you need to know about Australia's reopening to international travellers

Harrison reflected on the strain COVID-19 had put on people's lives and, more specifically, on international tourism, saying, "People have been living smaller lives during the pandemic."

The campaign slogan was quipped off that — aiming to attract visitors back to Australia — with Harrison remarking, "What better way to go big than go to Australia?"

The ad showcases a slew of beautiful Aussie travel destinations including the Northern Territory, Sydney Harbour and the Great Barrier Reef.

"It's about showcasing the incredible diversity and the incredible experiences that are here in Australian," Harrison says, jokingly adding the "hardest part" of her job was deciding on which destinations to include as there are so many to choose from.

READ NEXT: Bali is back! But should you travel there?

Since the pandemic placed travel plans on pause, there has been a pent-up demand from tourists who are busting to get back into Australia. Harrison said employees within Tourism Australia have reported call volumes have tripled.

The Australian Government has announced borders will finally be opening up to the world this month, with fully-vaccinated international arrivals allowed to enter Australia from February 21, 2022.

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Fun, effective or ‘very bland’? Advertising experts split on Australia’s tourism mascot Ruby the Roo

Some say the CGI kangaroo ‘looks fantastic’ and will cut through internationally, but critics believe Tourism Australia could have aimed higher

• Australia unveils new tourism ambassador Ruby the Roo
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Very bland or a bit of much-needed fun? Advertising experts are divided on Tourism Australia’s first unofficial brand ambassador since the pandemic, disputing whether the computer-generated kangaroo at the centre of the ads could help revive the country’s ailing international tourism sector.

Andrew Hughes, a marketing lecturer at the Australian National University, said a bigger splash was needed to encourage international tourists to fork out the cash for a visit to Australia.

Ruby the Roo , a cartoon creature voiced by the Australian actor Rose Byrne, was unveiled to the world on a major digital billboard in Tokyo on Tuesday.

The kangaroo and her tagline “Come and say ‘G’day” are part of the next instalment of Tourism Australia’s There’s Nothing Like Australia brand platform, its first global campaign since 2016.

“Nearly all successful global [Tourism Australia] campaigns have had global celebrities,” Hughes said, citing Chris Hemsworth’s 2018 Super Bowl advert and Paul Hogan’s much-loved “shrimp on the barbie” moment.

“Travel figures are down 50% in the US market, you don’t just have to get the awareness up, you’ve got to get interest.”

Hughes said he would have opted for a story campaign that wove a more complex narrative to sustain attention.

“If you just have Ruby the Roo and leave it at that … I’m going to put myself in the very bland corner,” he said.

“What’s the campaign about, really? It seems to run true to form from previous campaigns that just use stereotypes. The audience is more mature.”

Nathan Hodges, managing director at marketing consulting company TrinityP3, said Australians might have a “right old poke” at Ruby for failing to reflect how they saw themselves.

But he said the CGI kangaroo “looks fantastic” and was likely to cut through to an international audience.

“We have this collective madness every time these campaigns turn up,” he said.

“It’s not aimed at anyone in Australia or any of the advertising marketing experts in Australia. It’s not a mirror to us, it’s aimed at getting people here.

“There’s advertising that makes Australia feel good but there’s also advertising that works. It’s not about representing our country – we have ambassadors and politicians to do that.”

Hodges said the campaign “carries through a lot of messages already latent around Australia”.

“We have kangaroos, we’re friendly and it’s telling us ‘why don’t you come on down and have a bit of fun?’”

Dee Madigan, a creative director and a panellist on the ABC’s Gruen Transfer, agreed.

“I really like it,” she said. “I think we’ve disappeared too far up our backside in some of our overseas ads – they’ve been too highbrow.

“This is just fun and people are looking for fun. We’ve wanted to talk about everything else but the things people want to see – which is kangaroos, the harbour bridge – why not lead on our best foot?”

Madigan said the buoyant optimism of the campaign was a “smart” move as tourists emerged from the pandemic, particularly as its message could be translated without audio and capture a bilingual audience.

“Nothing gets lost in translation,” she said.

“Campaigns like ‘ where the bloody hell are you? ’ were only going to work on Australian audiences. Overseas tourists think we say ‘G’day’. Maybe we do, maybe we don’t, it doesn’t matter.”

Meanwhile, kangaroo advocates have lashed out at Tourism Australia for using the national icon to drum up tourism amid concerns about the commercial killing of kangaroos.

The former Australian Test cricketer Jason Gillespie, who is an ambassador for the advocacy group Kangaroos Alive, said it was hypocritical for Ruby the Roo to be touted on billboards around the world after revelations of the species’ treatment.

A New South Wales parliamentary report into the management of the commercial kangaroo industry found evidence there was inadequate monitoring of how the animals were culled, and recommended greater transparency of management practices.

“Tourism Australia even said we’re so lucky to have a globally recognisable and adorable icon in the kangaroo,” Gillespie said.

“We need to learn to value these international icons and acknowledge that they are worth much more to Australia alive. Our tourist industry relies on them.”

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Home » News » Qantas and Tourism Australia team up for stunning new ad

Qantas and Tourism Australia team up for stunning new ad

Qantas has partnered with Tourism Australia for its new video in the ‘Come and Say G’day’ campaign to promote this beautiful country of ours.

The new video, which features Tourism Australia’s CGI animated souvenir kangaroo and star of the show, Ruby the Roo, went live on Wednesday and showcases travelling with Qantas and the vast array of destinations that tourists come to Australia for.

Qantas Group CMO Petra Perry said the partnership showcases how to plan and book trips to Australia with Qantas and encourages international visitors to discover regional centres as well as its major gateway cities.

“Qantas is proud to be the airline partner for Tourism Australia’s Come and Say G’day campaign,” Perry said.

“In addition to driving inbound visitation, the campaign is building awareness that international tourists can easily travel directly to Australia and explore over 65 destinations across the country when they choose to fly with Qantas.”

The campaign invites travellers to visit remote regions and tourist hotspots alongside the various sprawling metropolises around Australia.

Tourism Australia will work with Qantas in 10 international markets, including the UK, US, Canada, Italy, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand and the film will be shown as part of Qantas’s inflight entertainment globally.

This is the latest edition in the ‘Come and Say G’day’ campaign that launched in October to industry-wide acclaim.

Check out our two part interview with Tourism Australia’s CMO Susan Coghill about the inspiration for the campaign.

Email the Travel Weekly team at [email protected]

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How a digital assistant is fuelling Tourism Australia's content and consumer insights trajectory

Australian tourism body explains the process of rolling out its AI chatbot capability and the internal and consumer benefits it's triggering

More extensive and informative customer sentiment analysis, improved engagement through personalised next-best actions and content gap recommendations are the big wins Tourism Australia is seeing after investing in chatbot technology.

Tourism Australia GM strategy and transformation, Paul Bailey, told CMO that when it comes to the promotional body’s owned website, the overarching ambition is to help consumers plan their trip to Australia in a more simplistic, easier way.

“The way we design content and applications on the website is about elevating the ease of planning your trip to Australia,” he said. “What consumers were telling us through the customer feedback platform online was that they want content that’s more relevant to them. It’s a very hard question to answer - it’s almost like turning nearly 6000 pages, many of which are translated into many languages, into dynamic fields and search. But we are not Google.”

The impetus to find ways to better target content led to a review of what channels and technologies could support such a customer need. Chat was selected as a quick test-and-learn app.

Bailey highlighted the ability to sit a digital assistant on top of the main Tourism Australia website, as well as ultimately integrate it with other technology in TA’s martech stack, as key reasons for the investment.

“It also gives us an ability to create specific guided flows, plus a machine learning environment to create the next-best answer by seeing how people engage,” he said.  

Having canvassed the market, Tourism Australia selected Stackchat as its technology provider. A former relationship with Stackchat’s co-founder, Marcus Robinson, who previously worked with Tourism Australia on its Adobe platform rollout, gave him valuable insight into the business and the challenges of managing a complex website with complex user needs, Bailey said.

“We wanted alignment to our creative capability as well – we didn’t want a robotic chat or just solving for a live chat person,” Bailey continued. “The [Stackchat] platform is robust and allows us to have our own Australian character to come through via tone, voice and context. We are promoting the unique character of Australia in a technical environment.”  

First use cases

Key to any technology rollout is to take baby steps, and Tourism Australia marketing technology manager, Manjit Gill, said the approach was no different in rolling out the digital assistant.

“We started with a small percentage of audience and a controlled environment of about 5-10 per cent being exposed,” he said. “That helped us iron out bugs as well as train the AI and identify any content gaps. We did a lot of in-house testing across business units as well and made changes on the fly.”  

The first use case was initially planned to run alongside Tourism Australia’s fresh 2020 UK marketing campaign, which was due to go live in January 2020 but paused at the last minute as a direct consequence of the devastating bushfires of 2019-2020 .

“It [the chatbot] was designed to support a campaign flow and that meant it was very contained and ensured we could turn it on and off,” Bailey explained. “We had also ensured it had that campaign character and was well aligned to our UK campaign.

“We reassessed the value and decided that testing in mid-2020 was the perfect time. It meant we could garner insights into what customers were feeling and what they were looking for and needing from us as a tourism body during a pandemic. The chat capability became an insights tool for us while testing it.”

So the ‘Chat Mate’ assistant debuted to UK audiences, a collaboration between Tourism Australia, Stackchat and digital partner agency, Digitas.

Questions being asked by consumers still largely oriented around making their planning a trip to Australia easier, but were indicative of the impact the bushfires then global pandemic was having on consumer thinking. For instance, many questions related to how to travel safely to Australia, what Covid protocols to expect and things like quarantine conditions when travelling to and around this country.

These were quickly identified as areas Tourism Australia had content gaps. “All of this provided us with great analysis for the content team to look at the questions, and which content we were missing and the best user path to pull people through,” Bailey said.  

The Tourism Australia team integrated the chatbot with its website content management system (CMS) in order to leverage owned content, as well as push consumers to partner sites where appropriate. At this stage, the platform does not integrate with any social channels, although the technical capability to do so is there.

Following the UK, a small version of the chatbot was created for the Australian market, with a test undertaken in April 2021 to support the ‘Australia on sale’ government initiative.

In this case, the desire was to connect domestic travellers to the right support agents as quickly as possible. This tied into a program known as the ‘Aussie specialist’ program, featuring agents trained in selling both Australia and core products across the country.

“It was a great test – we worked with Stackchat to integrate the Aussie specialist program into the chat, so when you went in, you could find the top three specialists in your area,” Bailey said. Geolocation, content type and sentiment was used to identify the best agent plus the best content to support the conversation a consumer was having.

As part of the activity, an automated email was also triggered to the consumer, including the contents of their chat, experiences referred to and next-best action recommendations.

“That trigger-based email was automated and a big win for us – there were no additional resources required,” Gill said. “We leveraged multiple technologies internally, including Adobe Target as our recommendation engine, then Adobe Campaign for the emails, plus the chatbot, and connected it all together.”   

Measuring success

As Bailey highlighted, any technology being adopted by Tourism Australia is judged on both customer and business success factors, as well as the ability to quickly integrate with the wider stack and scale if pilot are successful. Both the UK test and Australian launches have given Tourism Australia useful learnings and the confidence that the chatbot can scale.

“Our Aussie Specialists numbers here are about 2500, but internationally it’s over 30,000 agents. The chatbot needs to be able to be deployed on the fly and with a high degree of accuracy before it gets integrated into further technology and scaled up,” Bailey said.

For Bailey, the biggest internal benefits of the rollout are customer sentiment analysis and finding those content gaps.  

“The speed of analysis and insight is something we are still adapting to. We are getting 80,000 chats from the UK for example, but they’re seeing three times the amount of content and it’s more insight than we have had before,” he said.  As a result, Tourism Australia processes have been tweaked to more rapidly circulate content and sentiment analysis to teams.

Key measures of the chatbot’s impact from a customer perspective include the fact that chat users spend 2.7 times longer on the Australia.com website and chalk up twice as many page views as regular users. Tourism Australia has also seen 81.5 per cent positive user feedback overall, with 50.7 per cent of respondents rating their chat experience ‘great’ and 30.8 per cent rating it as ‘good’.  

For Bailey, the accuracy of the chatbot is a big highlight personally. “Because we had more time to ensure we are accurate, we got to 60 per cent, which I thought was pretty good and we launched at that level. And we were not fully integrated,” he said.

“To be further down the integration funnel and to be at 84 per cent accuracy for AI results is phenomenal. That’s the bot creating its own results based on user interaction and content on the site.”  

Overall, Bailey said the chatbot has proven its worth as a capability making it easier for consumers to plan and engage with Australia as a destination.

“We’re getting to understand who is further down the path and what that means. We don’t have that answer yet and we don’t know how granular we need to be,” he said. “In the UK, where they have a better understanding of Australia, the might be different to the US and possibly China.

“We also haven’t integrated offers or deals in yet as there is no point at this moment in time. We are careful on when we bring in the rest of the pieces from the website.”  

The next cab off the rank is to test the chatbot with translations and launch in the Japan market. Following that, Bailey was looking to launch the capability in bubble markets such as New Zealand and Singapore.

“Next year, as we have time on our site, we’ll look at the US,” he said. “Longer term, there are also markets like China, however that is more about in-chat applications, such as sitting in WeChat.”

Gill stressed the chatbot was a great example of building a platform with the customer front of mind while collecting data at the back end, further fuelling Tourism Australia’s customer data platform (CDP). Added to Tourism Australia’s Unified ID foundational technology , this all supports creating stronger connections with consumers.

For example, Bailey had in his sights next-best action recommendations on the types of content that should be shown to those consumers who leave the Australia.com site.

“It’s helping us understand the user journey then personalise not only through chat but also other channels,” Gill added.  

Read more on Tourism Australia's technology and marketing approach:

• 10 steps Tourism Australia’s CMO has taken to remain adaptable in the face of uncertainty
• How travel and tourism marketers have harnessed data in a pandemic
• Tourism Australia's digital chief flags data sharing partnerships as priority
• Tourism Australia, 7-Eleven and Telstra on balancing data-driven engagement with consumer consent

Don’t miss out on the wealth of insight and content provided by CMO A/NZ and sign up to our weekly CMO Digest newsletters and information services here. 

You can also follow CMO on Twitter:  @CMOAustralia , take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn:  CMO ANZ , follow our regular updates  via CMO Australia's Linkedin company page

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Nielsen data reveals australia’s top travel trends and the brands spending big to attract aussie tourists, 4 minute read | april 2024.

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Sydney – April 30 , 2024 – As many Australians return from a much-needed retreat over the recent school holiday break, millions are already planning their next getaway, embracing travel rewards schemes, while being wooed by travel brands spending millions to get their business.

Nielsen Consumer & Media View (CMV) data shows that 76% of Aussies plan on travelling domestically in the next 12 months, while more than half (52%) have their eye on an overseas destination.

Top domestic destinations

Younger Aussies (25 to 39) are the most likely to be bitten by the domestic travel bug, with 78% planning to holiday locally in the next 12 months. Sydney narrowly beats Melbourne as the preferred place to visit, followed by The Gold Coast, Regional NSW, then Brisbane.

Top overseas destinations

The even younger 18 to 24 age group are the most likely to travel overseas, with 58% planning to travel abroad in the coming year. The UK tops the list of desired OS destinations, followed by New Zealand, Japan, The USA and Indonesia.

While most Aussies are looking for a beach getaway when it comes to staying close to home, they prefer a trip involving plenty of sightseeing, followed by some rest and relaxation, once they leave the country.

Top travel websites

Data from Nielsen Digital Content Ratings (DCR) saw Qantas claim top spot when it comes to travel websites, followed by Trip Advisor with 5.82 million and 5.02 million users respectively in Q1 of this year. Booking Holdings Network was the third-largest platform in terms of users with 2.5 million.

Average user engagement time on most travel platforms was also consistent from Q4 2023 to Q1 2024, although Royal Caribbean Cruises and  Anytrip.com.au  led the pack. On average, Royal Caribbean users spent roughly 29 minutes interacting with the platform, while Anytrip users spent almost 27 minutes on the platform.

Top frequent flyer programs

The number of Australians who are members of a frequent flyer program also increased, with 57% of all Australian consumers now part of some sort of travel rewards scheme. Qantas remains the market leader with a 45% share of the market, followed by Virgin (31%), and other smaller players making up the remaining 24%.

Top travel advertisers

In addition, Nielsen Ad Intel data also shows that the travel and tourism industry spent more than $153 million on advertising in Australia in Q1, 2024 – an increase of 8% from the previous quarter, with TripADeal the biggest spender, followed by Virgin Australia, then the Flight Centre-owned Ignite Travel. 

Nielsen Ad Intel’s Australia Commercial Lead, Rose Lopreiato, said: “Australians’ love of travel continues to defy cost of living pressures, as shown by an 8% jump in travel ad spend this quarter. You can’t get a stronger indicator than that when it comes to how marketers and advertisers are spending in order to maximise ROI, forge lasting connections with brands and consumers, and do so in the most economical way possible. From competitive ad spend analysis, to knowing what your competitors are saying in market and the deals and offers you’re up against, Ad Intel helps you understand which ads are driving your competitors spend and where”.

Glenn Channel, Nielsen’s Pacific Head of Advanced Analytics added: “More than ever, brands need data that gives them the edge on their competition. That means going above standard demographic information, and understanding consumers, in this case travellers, as unique groups, who are motivated by more than just the urge to get away. Nielsen CMV enables brands to see consumers through an advanced audience lens, delivering a more holistic picture of behaviours and preferences with surprising linkages and purchase triggers that other consumer insight providers can’t match.”

About Nielsen

Nielsen shapes the world’s media and content as a global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics. Through our understanding of people and their behaviours across all channels and platforms, we empower our clients with independent and actionable intelligence so they can connect and engage with their audiences – now and into the future. Nielsen operates around the world in more than 55 countries. 

Learn more at www.nielsen.com and connect with us on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram). 

Media Contact

Dan Chapman Assoc. Director, Communications, Nielsen APAC [email protected] +61 404 088 462

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