Tourism Western Australia has taken out a prestigious advertising award in Europe.
Tourism Minister Sheila McHale said Tourism WA and its online creative agency, Soap Creative, had won a Golden Award of Montreux for the micro-site, http://www.therealaustralia.co.uk
Ms McHale said this year's Golden Award of Montreux, one of Europe's leading advertising competitions, included highly recognised brands such as McDonalds and Carlton Draught.
"This is a major success for Tourism WA's micro-site, which is part of a carefully orchestrated campaign to entice UK holidaymakers to WA," the Minister said.
"The microsite included an interactive virtual tour, a travel profiler, games, travel shopping bag with 'request a quote' from retail partner, Austravel, and a chance to win a trip for two to WA.
"In the first two weeks of the nine-week campaign, the site was the most popular of all Australian Government tourism websites, with an incredible 48 per cent of the UK's online market share."
The Minister said the site attracted 198,000 potential UK visitors, who each spent about 13 minutes learning about WA's key destinations and attractions.
"In addition, there were 10,000 'send to a friend' emails forwarded, which illustrates the marketing success of the microsite," she said.
"As a result of the campaign, Tourism WA received an extra 44,000 subscribers to their monthly eNewsletter, which is now sent to 83,000 people to entice them to WA."
Ms McHale said Tourism WA had won the Golden Award of Montreux in the Multimedia/Web/CD-ROM Travel Category.
The Internet campaign was part of a $1.63million brand marketing push by WA in the UK.
