Tourism Australia hands PR to Sinclair as Hong Kong takes center stage

Tourism Australia has handed its Hong Kong public relations account to Sinclair Communications, a deal which sees the independent agency take charge of the business for the next three years.Earlier this year Australia’s national tourism marketing body issued a PR tender calling for an agency to help support its media and stakeholder relations, influencer programs, content generation, social media as well as brand and reputation management.Tourism Australia yesterday confirmed the appointment, adding the agency's first project will be the launch of Tourism Australia’s global PR campaign ‘There’s Nothing Like Australia’ in Hong Kong, which officially kicks off this week.At yesterday’s campaign launch Tourism Australia’s newly installed regional GM Andrew Hogg laid out ambitious plans to grow tourism expenditure from Hong Kong by 50% to AU$1.5 billion by 2020, and grow tourism expenditure from China by 103% to AU$13 billion by 2020.Tourism Australia is backing this plan with some serious investment in marketing, with AU$34.2 million set aside to to support the Aquatic and Coastal campaign and AU$34.5 million to support the food and wine campaign.https://vimeo.com/136067569Hogg said Hong Kong was among Australia’s top 10 tourism markets and the ‘There’s Nothing Like Australia’ along with its ‘Restaurant Australia’ work have resulted in an increased global perception of Australia having great food and wine by over 21% over the past 12 months.“Hong Kongers love Australia," Hogg said."With a repeat visitation rate of 66%, one visit is not enough and Hong Kongers are going back to discover the next layer of experiences on offer. Through increasing our global marketing activities in the Hong Kong and China markets we are aiming to convert the enormous appeal for Australia into more visitors enjoying longer and more valuable stays.”Managing director of Sinclair Communications, Kiri Sinclair, said Tourism Australia is well known for creative destination PR and marketing campaigns.“The tourism industry is our forte and we are really pleased to be adding Tourism Australia to the portfolio of tourism clients we have worked with such as the Singapore Tourism Board, Expedia, Tigerair, The Pottinger Hong Kong and A2A Safaris.”