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Tourism Australia looking for ways to spread user generated content push to China

Breaking through the firewall: John Mackenney

Breaking through the firewall: John Mackenney

Tourism Australia is exploring ways to overcome the government firewall and roll out its user-generated content strategy into China, its digital transformation boss has said.

John Mackenney told delegates at the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas that TA was exploring technology solutions with content marketing and engagement platform Livefyre, which it already works with in Australia.

He said: “We are looking at platforms there, particularly Weibo, and rebuilding our whole social media journey on austalia.cn.

“But there are significant challenges posting this stuff on the other side of the Chinese firewall and getting access to social media accounts.

“We can’t show Facebook and Instagram, but it’s a big part of our future.”

China is Australia’s largest inbound market in terms of spend, injecting $7 billion into the economy in the 12 months ending June 2015, a rise of 32% on the previous year.

In January, TA partnered with Livefyre and Adobe to aggregate user-generated content from social media and deliver it on australia.com.

MacKenney said prior to launching its UGC strategy in January Australia had a perception problem, losing market share on search across key markets including the UK and US.

Since launching the campaign on Australia Day it has seen a 65% increase in dwell time on australia.com and a 77% uplift in leads sent to Australian tourism businesses and destinations.

Martin Lane

Martin Lane is a guest of Adobe at the Summit in Las Vegas

Mumbrella’s Travel Marketing Summit returns on April 6, with a keynote presentation from Tourism Australia chief marketer Lisa Ronson. See the program and book tickets here.Travel Marketing Summit.

 

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