Tourism Tasmania Update – It’s Not Just About Capacity, But Getting That Capacity In The Right Markets
Tourism Tasmania director aviation & access development Hans van Pelt highlights how a collaborative approach is key to developing enhanced connectivity. He looks at how domestic and international demand into Tasmania is growing and how it is not just about getting new capacity into the island state, but ensuring that capacity is being delivered in the right markets with regular frequencies and onward codeshare and interline connectivity.
Transcript
Hans van Pelt:Fundamentally, it's the destination itself. You know, people are discovering that there's so much to see, so much to do. It's a great drive location, so you can fly into Hobart, Launceston, Burnie, and Devonport, grab a rental car, go around. You know, it's really about focusing on the destination. So, you know, we have a very strong visitor economy strategy. It's around demand generation and conversion and working with partners. We have an access strategy for the island which is matched to our targets and overall growth and some of the things we want to do around seasonality and really increasing our yields and our dispersals. But it's also about product experience, product investment, product development, new hotels, new tourism attractions, and about customer experience. And we're, you know, we're growing probably around 6% compound, which has been great. We've got some targets for that. There's some challenges around that too, but it's really about promoting the destination and about promoting access to the destination and particularly working with the carriers. So we've very much involved industry in this, we've involved our airports in this strategy, and it's starting to pay off. It's a mix of both, and it's really us focusing on core target markets. You know, so obviously we've got the East Coast and we're slowly now expanding with capacity that's being added in by the airlines. We now have South Australian flights Virgin have just launched Perth flights into Hobart, which is great. That gives us, you know, extra impetus to go into those markets on a much stronger basis. We've also seen a lot of international growth, so, you know, very much the premium destination, and international growth is now very, very quick for us. It's the fastest growing state in the country, and there's 1.28 million visitors and there's 300,000 international visitors now, so we've got a nice mix and some great source markets to keep working on. You've got to be very careful, you've got to be very careful that you know what you're doing, so it's very much around quality, it's very much around premium. We're now starting to see some new hotels, but as a government we're also working to make sure that the existing product is able to be upgraded, and it's around working promotions. A lot of what we do is built around itineraries and giving people a reason to come to Tasmania and helping them with the research, and that's That's probably been the biggest key from a demand generation and a conversion perspective. It isn't just about capacity, it's about getting the right capacity on the right markets. So a lot of this conversation, a lot of the answer is around frequency. The more frequency we have from the main hubs, the better we can promote international, for example, because we've got greater connectivity. You know, there's codeshares on the domestic product into Tasmania now with the key alliance partners for both the airline groups. That gives you the ability to go further and, and to create Tasmania as an end destination, you know, beyond Melbourne or Sydney.
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