Australia Attracting Tourists Any Way Possible : Kathika Travel Website

With a worldwide recession affecting tourism in pretty much every country (and even up in space), it is probably a pretty good guess to think that countries lying further away from the main tourist markets are likely to suffer more. And no doubt that’s at least one of the reasons why we can’t stop hearing stories coming out of Australia this week about reasons to visit the land Down Under.

World’s Greatest Job Gets Queensland Publicity

A couple of months ago we mentioned the World’s Greatest Job promotion for the Great Barrier Reef – the Queensland tourist board put together the idea of offering a A$100,000, six-month “job” as caretaker of the reef, meaning that someone would get to live there for a half a year, enjoying all the activities the place has to offer, and blog extensively about it. Not surprisingly, this position attracted a lot of interest and nearly 35,000 applications from around the world, and these have now been narrowed down to the final 16. After these candidates are flown to Oz and interviewed, the final decision is expected in early May.

Analysts say this has been a great example of a tourism campaign – for an outlay of less than $2 million, they say Queensland has received publicity worth at least $100 million – everybody’s talking about the Great Barrier Reef and life in Australia, and whether or not that translates into a visit immediately, it’s surely a good investment for the future of Aussie tourism.

Cheap Flights Down Under

Another headline we keep reading these days is that it’s getting cheaper and cheaper to fly to Australia. With the launch of Virgin’s V Australia flights to the east coast of Australia, an airfare war has been sparked that is seeing the cheapest flights ever between destinations like Los Angeles and Sydney. Getting flights for under $1,000 is now commonplace and with Delta about to start flying the route, Qantas and V Australia will both be keeping their prices low. We’ve seen return flights from the US for under $700 and when you combine that with the weaker Australian dollar making in-country travel costs much cheaper, it might be that now is the best time for getting a bargain vacation Down Under.

Aussie Publicity Continues

For those who are still not convinced that Australia is the right destination for them, Tourism Australia has just started yet another strategy. It’s hiring internationally trendy bloggers from the United States, Britain, China and Germany to visit the place and blog about it. Basically, if you aren’t hearing about Australia these days, you’re living behind a rock.

Photo credit: Sami Keinänen