Rituparna Chatterjee – Mumbai
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Ryna Sequeira
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Tourism and Events Queensland, a statutory authority of the Queensland government, is launching a campaign on the movie Shaadi Ke Side Effects with Tourism Australia, Balaji Telefilms and Pritish Nandy Communications in February 2014. Through the campaign, they are looking at promoting the destination with hopes of bringing more numbers of tourists into the state. Speaking about the campaign, Ryna Sequeira, marketing manager India, Tourism and Events Queensland stated, “There is a song in the movie that was shot in Gold Coast last year. Through the campaign we are going to promote this song and the destination. This is the first time we have collaborated with a Bollywood film, so let us see how it goes and then we will decide whether to promote film tourism.”
Recently, Tourism and Events Queensland held their annual ‘Queensland on Tour’ roadshow for the eight consecutive year also targeting tier two and three cities in India. The annual roadshow commenced in Chandigarh in mid January, followed by Delhi, Kolkata, Pune and Mumbai. “For the first time we have gone to Chandigarh and Pune. We have got good responses there. In March, we will be travelling to Ludhiana, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram, Nagpur, where we will be hosting roadshows and sales calls,” revealed Sequeira. For Queensland, the highest numbers of Indian tourists come from Mumbai followed by Delhi, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. “But business also comes from tier two and three cities,” opined Sequeira.
In 2013, the tourism arrivals from India to Queensland grew by 22 per cent over 2012. They closed at 37,000 tourist arrivals in September 2013. For 2014-2015, they expect a further ten per cent growth. The average length of stay for Queensland is 29 nights and has grown by 5.3 per cent. For the whole of Australia, the average length of stay is 65 nights. “But if you speak of a holiday, then anybody would spend atleast six nights in Queensland in any itinerary because they would either do three nights Gold Coast and three nights Cairns, or four nights Gold Cost and two nights Hamilton or three night Gold Coast, one night Tangalooma and two nights Cairns. Queensland gets the maximum market share out of India for any Indian traveller going to Australia. We get 63 per cent leisure, 22 per cent GFR, 10 per cent business, and remaining is education and others. We consider MICE as leisure travellers because they are mainly incentives,” concluded Sequeira.
