THE South Coast Regional Tourism Organisation has been awarded top honours at the 2015 NSW Tourism Awards for its Unspoilt marketing campaign.
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Destination Marketing is one of the most hotly contested categories of the annual awards, with the South Coast RTO’s submission beating strong competition from Broken Hill (silver), and Wild About Whales, NPWS Sydney (bronze), to take home the top prize.
Unpsoilt was the South Coast region’s first ever “whole-of-region” tourism marketing campaign, developed in partnership with Destination NSW (DNSW), which provided 50 per cent of the campaign funding via their Regional Visitor Economy Fund (RVEF).
The South Coast RTO worked closely with DNSW’s marketing and digital teams to devise and execute the award-winning campaign.
South Coast chairperson Catherine Shields said the collaborative approach, both with Destination NSW and as a whole region, enabled a bigger impact than five small stand-alone campaigns.
“The Unspoilt campaign is a breakthrough collaborative marketing campaign which saw the five Local Government Areas on the South Coast - Shellharbour, Kiama, Shoalhaven, Eurobodalla and Sapphire Coast/ Bega Valley - pool their resources to brand and promote the region as a whole,” Ms Shields said.
“In a unique partnership with DNSW, the South Coast RTO created a standout positioning for the region with the Unspoilt South Coast.”
The campaign features people enjoying outdoor activities in the unspoilt landscape and this fresh approach has proved to be a runaway success.
“It has particularly resonated with our target markets. Busy couples and families in Sydney and Canberra, who long for a break in beautiful surroundings,” she said.
South Coast RTO and DNSW revealed the Unspoilt campaign in September and it contributed to record increases in domestic visitor numbers to the South Coast and more than one million leads to South Coast tourism businesses.
Since its launch, the campaign has delivered to the South Coast region its strongest growth in the tourism sector since the introduction of the National Visitors Survey in 1999.