AANA presents the latest episode of Marketing Dividends featuring Lisa Ronson, chief marketing officer at Tourism Australia, who discusses how its global marketing strategy is helping attract more overseas visitors with huge multiplier effects for the broader economy.

“We’re tracking really well in the global market. In the last year alone, we welcomed 8.1 million visitors to our shores which was an increase of about 11 per cent on the year prior. From a competitive point of view, our rivals are the powerhouses of Europe, particularly France and Italy, the United States and more recently, Japan,” Ronson said.

Ronson moves on to discuss how Tourism Australia aims to help achieve the Australian Government’s goal of generating $115 billion per year in tourism expenditure by 2020.

“Our role as a tourism body is to make sure we generate tourism spend that contributes back to the Australian economy, it’s very much about expenditure and we unashamedly focus on a high yield in-bound traveller,” Ronson said.

“In the past year alone, we’ve generated $98.6 billion in tourism expenditure which is an increase of about 7.5 percent on the year prior. It is our joint industry goal to get to at least $115 billion annually in tourism expenditure by 2020. Based on the current Tourism Research Australia forecasts, we’re looking like we will comfortably reach this target. In fact, we should beat it by a good $10 billion,” Ronson said.

Ronson also says a significant amount of Tourism Australia’s content is shared widely through social media.

“We get about 3000 pieces of content a day so we’re very fortunate. Our team has specific processes and systems in place to make sure that they’re getting the best content available.

“We’ve got some great examples of how we use this type of content, one being Symbio Wildlife Park. They’ve had 150 million points of engagement through what we’ve shared on our platforms. Visitation to their park has increased 60 per cent as a direct result of what we’ve done,” Ronson said.

Ronson also describes how Tourism Australia uses data to ensure the right messaging gets to different people.

“Using data is all about efficiency. It’s about getting the right message to the right customer at the right time. If you have booked a trip to Australia, we won’t bother serving our “Come to Australia” messages. Instead, we’ll start serving information like ‘here’s the experiences that you can do when you’re in Australia’ or capital city type messages. Data defines and controls what message we send to that consumer, resulting in a more efficient and targeted message,” Ronson said.

This episode was jointly hosted by James Hier, CEO MEC and Nadine Blayney, Deputy Business Editor and Business Editor SKY NEWS BUSINESS.