Melbourne Businesses – Register now for your chance to receive a mentoring opportunity!
The Australian Tourism Accreditation Program (ATAP), with the support of Destination Melbourne Ltd, are currently offering a one on one mentoring session for selected businesses within the Melbourne area who have registered to access the ATAP online program from January 1st to May 1st 2013.
Five businesses that have registered with ATAP will be randomly drawn to receive a two hour mentoring session with a member of ATAP staff, at a time of their choosing. The names will be drawn on Monday 6th of May and ATAP will contact the recipients once drawn.
The two hour session will focus on introducing the business to the online program, taking them through each of the modules and providing support for their application. It will also provide businesses with an opportunity to gain feedback and advice on their business systems/plans in place.
The aim of the mentoring session is to assist in the development of the business and to give them a head start on completing their ATAP application.
As this is a pilot initiative, to begin with it will only be available to businesses that reside within the Melbourne or inner Melbourne suburbs.
For a copy of the registration form or to find our more contact the ATAP office on (03) 9620 4199 or email info@atapvic.net.au
March 13, 2013 at 11:35 am | Featured Business | No comment
T-QUAL Marketing Campaign Update
The 2012/2013 marketing activity for T-QUAL commenced on 24 October 2012. Activity to date includes consumer advertising, industry communications, and media relations. Tourism Australia, who is responsible for the marketing and promotion of T-QUAL have compiled a report on the current marketing activity.
This report provides an update on the status of this activity in the period from 16 December 2012 to 15 January 2013. Key highlights include:
· 29,478 unique visitors to TripAdvisor micro site (109% of campaign KPI of 27,000)
· Over 5,900 accredited products listed on the TripAdvisor micro site
· Three print advertorials published with the next one due for publishing on 17 February
· Blogger proposals for the T-QUAL Tick Race distributed with follow up meetings being arranged for three of them
To read the report please click here
February 25, 2013 at 1:33 pm | General | No comment
Tourism Australia – How to work with the National Tourism Organisation
Tourism Australia is our countries national tourism organisation which is responsible for attracting international visitors and encouraging Australians to travel domestically.
Many tourism businesses often forget to ensure they are keeping up to date with Tourism Australia activities and fail to make the most of the range of initiative and opportunities they have in place.
We have listed some of the ways that you can work with Tourism Australia:
- Subscribe to Essentials, Tourism Australia’s free weekly email newsletter – especially as this is the way you will find out about special industry offers and opportunities
- Become familiar with the industry website – it has a range of useful information for all tourism businesses
- Attend their free industry briefings – the next one in Melbourne is on Tuesday March 26th
- Access their range of valuable toolkits. Topics include Planning for Inbound Success and How to Generate Publicity
- Keep up to date on trends and insights within the industry via their Insight Files
- Make the most out of their range of research available including data on Visitor Arrivals, International Visitors, Market Profiles and more
- Get involved with Tourism Australia’s public relations activities – you should be sending them Media Releases from your business on newsworthy updates
- Visit and post on Tourism Australia’s Facebook page. They feature the best posts/images of Australian experiences every Friday
- Make sure your listings on the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse is up to date – this feeds directly into the Australia.com website. (Contact onlinecomments@tourism.vic.gov.au to get listed)
If you are an established business and would like to work with Tourism Australia, the Business Development Managers are often your best contact point for information about Tourism Australia’s activities, events, research, and marketing opportunities.
The Victorian Busienss Development Manager is:
Kate Dale
Business Development Manager
Tourism Australia – SA, TAS, VIC, WA
Direct: 02 9361 1717
Email: kdale@tourism.australia.com
February 25, 2013 at 1:21 pm | General | No comment
Workforce Futures: Exciting Initiative for Tourism Businesses
2500 tourism and hospitality businesses throughout Australia will be able to undertake a comprehensive business analysis leading to a Workforce Development Plan, thanks to a new Workforce Development initiative.
With funding provided through both industry contribution and from government (through the National Workforce Development Fund) this new Workforce Development Initiative, to be known as Workfoce Futures, will really strengthen the nations tourism and hospitality industry.
Managed by Service Skills Australia (SSA) businesses will collaborate with an industry Skills Advisor to develop a plan that strategically responds to identified workforce issues impacting upon the business’s performance.
The initiative is built around a national network of 100 industry Skills Advisors whose engagement facilitates an informed approach to target skills development within businesses.
The Skills Advisory Network whilst targeting tourism and hospitality businesses in remote, regional, rural and major population centres, also ensures the inclusion of businesses within the 8 Tourism 2020 “hotspots”.
Workforce Futures is now “open for business”, and thanks to our network partners 100 Skills Advisors are resourced, trained and on the ground ready to engage with tourism and hospitality businesses across the country. Any tourism, travel and hospitality business can apply to participate as long as they meet the criteria:
- Business has a current Australian Business Number (ABN)
- Business has a written Business Plan
- Business has been trading for at least 12 months
- At least 25% of business activity is directly related to tourism and/or hospitality
- Willingness and capacity to actively participate in the Program (17.5 hours across a 6 month block)
For further information on the project visit www.workforcefutures.com.au or contact Stephen Ollerenshaw Program Manager, Service Skills Australia 02 82431200. If you would like to register for Workforce Futures please follow this link – Registrations
February 25, 2013 at 12:17 pm | General | No comment
Important Notice to all Operators – Be Careful
An improtant message from Tourism Victoria and Destination Melborune:
Tourism Victoria and Destination Melbourne would like to notify operators about a letter and invoice that is currently circulating in Victoria.
It has come to our attention that some Victorian tourism operators are receiving letters from victourism.com.au, together with an invoice asking for payment of a 12 month listing on a Vic Tourism site.
victourism.com.au and Vic Tourism are not related in any way to Tourism Victoria.The letter from Vic Tourism is not from Tourism Victoria nor does Tourism Victoria ever send Tax Invoices for visitvictoria.com listings by mail.
If you have any questions regarding the scam or have received a letter please contact the visitvictoria.com Support Desk on 1300 306 366 or via onlinecomments@tourism.vic.gov.au.
January 25, 2013 at 11:52 am | General | No comment
T-QUAL Update
The team at Tourism Australia has been very busy promoting the T-QUAL brand and encouraging visitors to use T-QUAL accredited businesses. Their newsletter provides an update on recent promotional activity, what’s planned for the coming months and other useful information.
Remember, if you haven’t already done so; please contact the ATAP Victoria office to ensure you have signed up to the T-QUAL sublicense. The only way you can get involved with T-QUAL is through an endorsed accreditation scheme such as ATAP.
Already we have been able to secure a place in a range of print and PR opportunities for some of our accredited businesses that have signed up.
To read the T-QUAL newsletter please click here
January 25, 2013 at 11:39 am | Featured Business | No comment
GIPPSLAND IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS
Please find below a message from Destination Gippsland:
Dear Tourism Colleague,
Fire activity has affected the areas near Aberfeldy and Glenmaggie and has resulted in closures to the southern section of the Alpine National Park and Avon Wilderness.
We are aware that this fire activity has the potential to impact tourism business. It is now an important time for us to work together to let potential visitors know that Gippsland is open for business, and to convey positive and factual messages about holidaying in our region.To read on how you can assit in conveying positive and factual messages please click here
January 25, 2013 at 11:37 am | General | No comment
ATAP Staff Changes
As many of you will have heard Service Skills Victoria, which has overseen ATAP for many years now, ceased all operations as of December 31st 2013. For ATAPs day to day operations, this has not had a great impact. We are still located in the same office – Level 2, 10-16 Queen Street Melbourne, and we continue to work with and accredit tourism businesses – in a sense its business as usual.
The closure of the SSV office has resulted in some staff changes. Ian Nicolson, who has been the CEO of ATAPs Victorian Office for over 5 years, has moved onto a new and exciting role as Head, Regional Development, Singapore for William Angliss Institute. He remains passionate about accreditation and will continue to participate in discussions at a national level on the future direction of accreditation. We are sure he will strive in his new role and we wish him all the best.
Following his departure, Erin McLeod has stepped up to the role of Executive Officer and Annika Hoffmann is now working full time as Accreditation Officer. We both look forward to working with you all over the next 12 months and beyond.
January 25, 2013 at 11:15 am | General | No comment
Smooth Operators – Print Marketing for T-QUAL and ATAP
On November 25th, 2012, ATAP teamed with T-QUAL to run 4 page print advertorial in the in Sunday Magazine, QWeekend and Sunday Times Magazine which are distributed in NSW, VIC, QLD and WA. The total circulation for these magazines were 1,672,889.
This was a great opportunity for ATAP to promote its accreditation message whilst promoting our ‘tick’. Various operators throughout the country, who have agreed to the T-QUAL sub licence with ATAP, were picked to participate with a listing.
So see a copy of the feature please click here
November 30, 2012 at 8:16 am | General | No comment
TQUAL Marketing Update
There have been some very exciting developments with the T-QUAL marketing over the past few months which has seen some very pleasing results within T-QUALs consumer marketing campaign. Key highlights including:
- Over 10,000 unique visitors to the T-QUAL micro site on TripAdvisor
- 2.8 million sponsored links displayed on Google
- Two print advertorials completed (published on 4 and 25 November)
- T-QUAL content included at over 11 industry events
To read the full report please open the Marketing Update for November 2012
Dont forget that if you want to be a part of the T-QUAL marketing opportunities you must ensure that you have agreed to the T-QUAL sub licence. This can be done when submitting your annual renewal, three yearly review or you can contact the office on (03) 9620 4199 for a copy.
