Tourism Australia Targets Australian Families with Beach Campaign

The traditional beach holiday provides the focus for Tourism Australia's latest domestic campaign, which seeks to encourage Australian families considering an overseas trip to switch instead to a holiday in Australia.

Tourism Australia Managing Director Andrew McEvoy said the domestic push, the latest phase of its There's nothing like Australia campaign, was backed by new research in which parents and their children rated a beach holiday in Australia significantly higher than beach holidays taken abroad.

"An Australian beach holiday provides the ideal environment for families to spend quality time together and for children to develop self confidence, life skills and values," Mr McEvoy said.

"Australia has some of the most desirable coastal destinations in the world, and our research confirms that the traditional beach holiday hasn't lost its appeal with Australian families."

"With this campaign we aim to remind Australians that the benefits they most want from a family holiday - things like safety, quality time, freedom and space - are all available right here in our own country, at the beach," he said.

Australian parents and their children rated their own country's beach holidays as comparable as or better than overseas holidays in 13 of 15 categories, including swimming, relaxing, fishing, exploring rock pools and playing beach games such as beach cricket and building sandcastles.

The campaign will see Tourism Australia work closely with the states and territories as well as up to 120 industry partners including Flight Centre, one of the biggest global travel agency networks, and AOT Group, the largest wholesaler of Australian travel products and services in the world.

Mr McEvoy said that families represented the largest domestic tourism segment in terms of both numbers and also spending, contributing nearly a third of total leisure holiday expenditure. In the past 12 months, the family segment grew more than 6 per cent, compared to domestic tourism as a whole which expanded around 1 per cent.

The launch of the campaign comes just weeks after the most recent National Visitor Survey (NVS) which shows continued growth in domestic tourism, with total trips up 0.8 per cent, nights up 4.3 per cent and spending up 2.7 per cent for the first quarter of 2013.

Mr McEvoy said Tourism Australia had been heavily promoting domestic tourism, as part of its broader There's nothing like Australia campaign launched in 2010, and was seeing a significant turnaround in domestic travel, with the 74.6m domestic trips taken by Australians in the past 12 months just short of the last peak (75.6m) in 2008.

"Australians are now taking ten times more trips in their own country than overseas, and it's particularly pleasing to see more Australian families choosing to holiday in their own country. With this campaign we want to remind Australian families of the unforgettable experiences and memories of a beach holiday at home," he said.

In 2012 Australians took nearly 75 million overnight domestic trips, an increase of 4 per cent compared to the previous year.

Domestic tourism remains the biggest segment of the Australian tourism industry, injecting A$50 billion into the economy last year.

The campaign includes TV, cinema, print and digital and runs between 27 July and13 September.