PUTTING OUR NAME ON IT
Rebranding seen as ideal way to get international visitors zeroed in
GOODBYE Tropical North Queensland, hello Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef.
The Far North’s peak tourism body, Tourism Tropical North Queensland ( TTNQ), has ditched the age old “Tropical North Queensland” moniker in favour of a more wellknown and location-based brand, “Cairns and Great Barrier Reef”.
The region’s unique stories will be used to promote the destination through print, digital media and user-generated content in the domestic and international markets, as part of the region’s $2.8 million domestic campaign which began in August.
The organisation’s chief executive, Mark Olsen, said the rebranding exercise, which locals were expected to start seeing when an Outback tourism campaign was due to be rolled out in mid-2020, had been planned for many years.
“Cairns is more Googled than the Gold Coast as a visitor experience in Australia, so we need to pick up on that and make sure that our visitors know where they’re talking about,” he said.
He said it made sense to continue the Cairns and Great Barrier Reef brand domestically, as it had proven successful overseas.
“Rather than just using individual images with a generic name ‘Tropical North Queensland’, (tourists) will see amazing images representing experiences you can’t do elsewhere, connected with the individual location where that’s possible.
“If they don’t know where Kuranda is, or they don’t know where the Daintree is, we have a starting point location for them, with the airport they’ll most likely land at.”
TTNQ has no plans to change its own name in the rebranding process.
Daintree tour operator Lawrence Mason believed the rebranding exercise was a good idea.
“The problem is, if you market obscure names or obscure concepts, people don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef is far better known than some obscure construct of Tropical North Queensland.
“If you go to a random family in Dresden in Germany and say ‘ Tropical North Queensland’, they won’t know what you’re talking about.
“Whereas, if you say ‘Cairns’, they might know of it.
“If you say ‘ Great Barrier Reef’, they certainly know of it.”