FROM TOURISM TASMANIA VISUAL LIBRARY

Tasmania Video Footage Wanted

Dear Tourism Operator,

If you have any new video footage of your tourism product that could be used to market your tourism experience and Tasmania, now is great time to contact the Visual Library. Digital video footage is a valuable component of the service we provide to market Tasmania to a worldwide audience.

All types of footage will be considered including general scenic shots as well as footage of people enjoying your tourism experience.

Ideally this footage is to be supplied to the Visual Library free-of-charge and without copyright restrictions. It is important that you ensure the agreement with your filmmaker allows you to pass the footage to a third party, namely Tourism Tasmania. This allows Tourism Tasmania to promote your product or experience through all mediums, extending the potential exposure of your product to media or travel trade worldwide.

Submitting your footage

When you submit the footage, the Visual Library Team will make a selection and let you know via email which segments they feel will give you the best exposure. You will then receive an agreement from Tourism Tasmania for signature by the filmmaker or yourself (if you have the appropriate clearance from your filmmaker). In this agreement you will be able to specify usage of your video content, for example Tourism Tasmania use only, or whether you are happy for us to supply your footage to media and trade worldwide.

To submit your footage or for more information, please contact the Visual Library on (03) 6230 8165 or email images@tourism.tas.gov.au

You are welcome to contact us with any additional questions about Tourism Tasmania’s Visual Library.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Regards,

Alanna Rolph & Rene Wanless
Tourism Tasmania Visual Library

The Tourism Australia ‘There’s Nothing Like Australia’ website went live on the 15th of April and was quickly adopted by travellers and Australian’s as a place to share their travel photos. Over 300 images were posted on the first day and we were very pleased to see Tourism Australia ensuring the content is tagged by geographic location, by number and by topic.

Assuming that the site’s Terms and Conditions address distribution of user content to other sites (which is the intent of the campaign to publish the images on a map on australia.com) it would seem logical that the content is also syndicated to ATDW (www.atdw.com.au) distributors to extend the reach and effectiveness of the campaign.

Perhaps this will happen next?

We understand that the campaign was designed so the States and Territories (STO’s) could continue the initiative at State and Regional level. We would assume the content collected by this new site will then be sent on to the States and Territories to publish on their websites and this content will then be migrated to the ATDW.

The new ‘There’s Nothing Like Australia’ campaign being launched by Tourism Australia on the 15th of April is a healthy step in the right direction, acknowledging the value of user generated content in promoting travel and tourism in Australia.

There's Nothing Like Australia - Photos and Stories

planbooktravel.com.au has been actively pushing Australian tourism operators, Regional Tourism Organisations (RTOs), State Tourism Organisations (STOs) and even Visitor Information Centres (VICs) to use content to promote their location for some years now and we welcome the support of Tourism Australia to pursue the same initiative.

We are yet to see a preview of how this new 4 million dollar site will work but we surely hope it is more than just another branding exercise and can achieve real, measurable results. The reference by Federal Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson in News.com article on the 31st of March 2010, did not leave us full of hope: “The photos will form part of a searchable online mosaic of Australia that will hopefully become word-of-mouth marketing.”

So what would we like to see from Tourism Australia and this campaign?

Firstly, lets hope they get the content structured right. It should be geographically tagged and catalogued by Australian location, Region and State.

Will it be syndicated to the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse www.atdw.com.au?

If the ATDW received the content, they could distribute it to their network of websites and make it available to a wider group of potential consumers. Distributors could also apply their own technology and applications to present the content in such a way as to enhance it and offer measurable tourism outcomes.

The smarter we are with this data, the greater opportunity we have to create meaningful links to Australian tourism products and services and in turn allow consumers (travellers) to be inspired to travel to Australia.

We look forward to seeing what happens on the 15th. Perhaps Tourism Australia already had all this in mind.

We hope so.