Skift Take
Chipchase likens her destination marketing organization to a content company that both consistently shares information and measures its impact in order to tweak what it puts out to which markets.
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Editor’s Note: Skift is publishing a series of interviews with CEOs of destination marketing organizations where we discuss the future of their organizations and the evolving strategies for attracting visitors. Read all the interviews as they come out here.
This continues our series of CEO interviews that began with online travel CEOs in Future of Travel Booking (now an e-book), and continued with hotel CEOs in the Future of the Guest Experience series (which is also an e-book).
Sydney is a world famous destination touting iconic attractions including the Sydney Opera House, Harbour Bridge, and Bondi Beach.
Sydney received almost 3 million international visitors in the year ending September 2014, a 6.3 percent increase over the previous year. Sydney receives 94 percent of visitors to New South Wales, making it the most important market to promote within the state. Sydney is also going through its biggest hotel boom in almost 15 years with developers looking to increase the city’s room supply by 20 percent before 2020.
As global tourism grows, Sydney and the surrounding state are experiencing high visitor growth. However, the local tourism board Destination NSW is not content to wait for economic forces to draw visitors to its shores. It’s investing in annual and one-time events that attract first-time visitors from long-haul markets.
Destination NSW has a budget of about $104 million supported by the state government and local partners including sporting and cultural organizations, hotel chains, and industry associations.
Skift recently spoke with Destination NSW CEO Sandra Chipchase about the destination marketing organization’s strategies for U.S. and Chinese markets, information as the new marketing battleground, and destination marketing organization’s need to step up and take responsibility for finding funding.
An edited version of the interview can be read below:
Skift: Sydney is looking to attract more U.S. travelers. How do you overcome Americans’ view of the distance?
Sandra Chipchase: We have a very different view of distance in Australia. We’ll drive two hours just to go to a party. From our perspective, we see it as we’re only three meals and two movies away. We’re used to traveling long distances whenever we travel to the Northern Hemisphere, which is why our national carrier Qantas is an expert in that field. Most flights leave a
