The Advantage Travel Partnership has embarked on a partnership campaign with Tourism Australia to help support them in their drive to increase demand for holidays to Australia.

The campaign is already underway and is set to deliver a wide-reaching selection of activities designed to boost Advantage’s members destination knowledge, as well as provide them with training, content and marketing tools to help generate new Australia enquiries and bookings. Some Advantage agents will also have the opportunity to join the ‘G’day Australia’ mega fam trip, taking place this coming October.

The campaign is underpinned by the objective of helping members make more high value bookings to Australia, and has been designed to roll out across six months through four key activations. It has also been planned to coincide with Tourism Australia’s own global ‘Come & Say G’day’ campaign activity, which will further help Advantage’s members generate new business.

The four activations have been structured to encompass training, general agent awareness of the destination and types of holiday product available, direct to consumer activity designed to generate new leads, and marketing content for member to select from to include in their own marketing.  

David Forder, Head of Marketing, Advantage Travel Partnership said: “We are thrilled to be partnering with Tourism Australia to help widely promote this amazing destination. Their product fits perfectly with independent travel agents who are skilled at building tailor-made itineraries to meet their customer’s needs. The whole structure of the campaign has been built around providing our members with end-to-end support – from increasing their destination knowledge, through to helping bring new high-value customers to their business who are looking to travel to Australia.

“As part of this campaign, we’ve already had great success in engaging our agent community to complete the Aussie Specialist Training Programme, which will set our members on the right path to helping them provide an exceptional service to customers looking to travel to Australia.”

Another key part of the Australia campaign is a dedicated Australia consumer magazine that Advantage have created for its members. Launched last week, the overbranded magazine has been distributed

to members who have signed up to receive it, ready to distribute to their customers.

Forder continued: “Our customer magazines are well received by member’s, as they provide high-quality print and digital content to engage customers. This is the first time we have produced one for a sole destination, and I have to say, it looks great! Australia is a visually stunning destination, so it works well bringing the content to life through a magazine. I’m delighted with the take up of it too – we’re expecting it to reach around 70,000 customers across the breadth of the UK!”

Sally Cope, Regional General Manager, UK & Northern Europe, Tourism Australia said: “We’re delighted to be partnering with The Advantage Travel Partnership for the first time and have already seen the benefits of such strong support from Advantage members as a result. Australia is a complex but high value long-haul destination and the content produced as part of our joint Come & Say G’Day campaign has inspired and provided agents with the knowledge they need to sell Australia. In addition, we’re delighted to have seen a significant increase in the uptake of the Aussie Specialist Program, our award-winning online training platform for front line sellers.”

Advantage have also launched a dedicated campaign hub on the Advantage members intranet where they can find out everything they need to know about the partnership with Tourism Australia and all the great ways they can increase their Australia bookings, including a list of Advantage’s preferred suppliers the can book with. Other activity in the campaign includes a blog writing competition, point of sale, and a range of content to use across web, social and email.