Wotif's latest campaign focuses on domestic tourism with personal digital-led approach

The managing director of Wotif says the travel booking site's latest campaign effort aims to be bold, meaningful and personal. And it's focusing on digital channels over TV to achieve it.

Wotif has launched its latest campaign, 'The Festival of Wot?', a countrywide competition which aims to highlight domestic Australian tourism by showing the unique and different facets of small town destinations around the country.

“The idea was born by looking at the success metrics of the Next Big Thing campaign and looking at what we wanted to do next. And we wanted to continue being bold, creative and meaningful and be social and PR-led and do something that engages the Australian public,” Wotif Group managing director, Daniel Finch, told CMO. 

The initiative comes after research conducted by Wotif found Australians have visited fewer than 1 per cent of Australia’s towns, despite three quarters (75 per cent) of people reporting they are willing to detour to uncover something unique. What's more, over half of all Aussies making holiday choices based on the potential to learn or experience more of Australia.

“Australians hadn’t explored as much of Australia as what we would think. The Next Big Thing was about uncovering destinations that should be on people’s Bucket List and it was also about the fact that the big things in these destinations, say the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour, drove local tourism,” Finch explained. “It put those destinations on a map with a representative visual.”

The Festival of Wot campaign is the latest initiative in the roll out of the travel site’s 'It’s Aussie for Travel' brand platform, which has been developed by Ogilvy. Finch told CMO the messaging captures the sites history and knowledge of local travellers.

“We’ve got a lot of data to back up our heritage within the travel scene, which is representative of how Australians travel, and we have over 2 million reviews from Australian travellers and our brand is very Australian geared to help Australians travel,” he continued.

What's more, Finch said Wotif eschews large-scale media such as television commercials in favour of more personal, intimate messaging, which is possible using social. In turn, he suggested the latest campaign can be more meaningful and deliver more impact.

“By having engagement with regional Australia, by having the bold, creative approach in The Next Big Thing and Festival of Wot campaigns, we’re putting provocative ideas into the minds of Australians about our destinations and giving them reasons to consider going there," he added.

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