Qantas and Tourism Australia Back on Good Terms

8th Apr 2016

Qantas Airways and Tourism Australia are once again on good terms, as was evident from the comments made by the airline's executive manager group brand and marketing Stephanie Tully and CMO at Tourism Australia Lisa Ronson during the Travel Marketing Summit held yesterday.

Speaking at the Travel Marketing Summit, Qantas CMO Tully said:

"We have work in the market in Japan together and we've got some other stuff planned. We're absolutely working with Tourism Australia again which is lovely."

Tourism Australia CMO Lisa Ronson explained:

"We recently worked together on Qantas' great safety video, we're doing some work in the Asian markets, we're talking about other markets. Yes, we've worked with other airlines, but we're definitely working more closely together. It makes sense for Tourism Australia and Qantas to work together, all Australians are better off for it, we're happy with that."

Ronson added:

"The challenge for all of us is how do we rely less on paid media. We've been saying that for years, the challenge is to do it now and focus on our owned and earned channels and used paid media, not as a last resort, but to think through some of those other channels first before we just jump to paid media. If we can achieve that nirvana, the way we spend our money and how we allocated our budgets will fundamentally change but do I think that's going to change in the next 12 months? Probably not."

Tully and Ronson were also joined at the panel by Amanda Behre, Director of Brand and Marketing at Wotif, who spoke about the importance of advertising as a service and using mobile marketing in aviation and tourism industries more:

"If we know a little bit about our audience, we might know they booked a trip to New Zealand, we need to be making sure we're serving them the right content. Don't remarket them another trip to New Zealand, we know they're traveling in five days' time, have you booked your travel insurance? Here are the top five experiences in Auckland. We've got to start telling the right sequential story to a customer."

Qantas and Virgin Australia reunited this year with a new safety video, which forms the core of Tourism Australia's new tourism campaign. The two have had their falling out in 2012 after Alan Joyce, Chief Executive Officer at Qantas decided to stop financially supporting Tourism Australia. Qantas CEO then said it was 'impossible to work with Tourism Australia', saying that a group of investors, then-chairman of Tourism Australia Geoff Dixon being one of them, are doing their best to 'unravel Qantas' structure and direction'.