Tourism Australian and Jetstar join forces to recapture Japan market

TOURISM Australia will step up use of social media to try to grow the Asian tourism dollar as part of a $10 million partnership to market through Jetstar's expanding overseas presence.

The body's managing director, Andrew McEvoy, said today recapturing the tourism trade from Japan would be the first priority of the new three-year partnership, to be combined with the introduction of Jetstar Japan from next year.

He said today that an initial $2 million would be put into marketing in Japan, where inbound tourism numbers are at 350,000 compared with the peak of 800,000 in 1997.

"Japan has been a declining market and we need to do things differently,'' Mr McEvoy said.

But Tourism Australia and Jetstar were looking beyond the traditional forms of print advertising to spread the word among a new Japanese audience through Facebook, Twitter  and other social media.

There are already about 2 million followers of Tourism Australia on facebook and Mr McEvoy said its "There's Nothing Like Australia'' campaign would link with Jetstar's "Call to Action'' campaign.

He said it was aimed at more directly connecting booking availability with the overall tourism advertising message to prompt potential customers to act upon their positive image of Australia.

Mr McEvoy said linking in with Jetstar marketing was a natural growth for Australian tourism as the airline alreadyy had 60 per cent of the traffic from Japan to Australia, which went to 100 per cent with Qantas and its One World parntner Japan Airlines - JAL.

Jetstar CEO Bruce Buchanan said the Japanese market to Australia was recovering strongly after declining by a third earlier this year in wake of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident.

"In Asia, we're leveraging a new middle class market, many of whom have never flown before,'' Mr Buchanan said.

He said about 25 per cent of Japanese customers travelling to Australia had never flown before.

Mr Buchanan said the follow-up to the Japan strategy would most likely be China, with Jetstar last week expanding to its ninth destination there.

Mr McEvoy said a key factor in working with Jetstar was taking advantage of the new network Jetstar Japan was building in reaching regional connections through that nation and elsewhere into Asia.

Jetstar Japan, which will be owned with majority shareholders JAL and Mitsubishi, is expected to start operating from Tokyo next year.

Source - heraldsun.com.au