WA tourism marketing boost for Perth

The Australian Hotels Association (WA) has welcomed the announcement by the WA McGowan Government that it will immediately reprioritise $2 million of the Tourism Western Australia budget to drive tourist visitation through Western Australia’s gateway city, Perth.

The new campaign initiated by tourism minister Paul Papalia will build leisure travel visitation in key Australian and overseas markets and help reignite Perth’s low hotel occupancy rates.

Australian Hotels Association WA CEO Bradley Woods said the new campaigns would be “critically important” for driving tourism and event visits to Perth and WA markets over the next six to eight months.

“We’ve had an enormous increase in room capacity without a corresponding increase in leisure and event visitation, so there are many hundreds of job-creating opportunities that are not materialising and that this campaign will put bums on seats, bodies in beds and create the opportunities for the tourism industry to deliver for the state,” he said.

The campaign was developed in consultation with the AHA and focuses on key markets such as Singapore, Malaysia, China, Sydney and Melbourne.

The $2 million campaign will be multi-focused on co-operative marketing opportunities with airlines, travel agents, travel websites and hotels offering incentives for people to travel immediately and take advantage of special hotel package rates.

Since 2012 over 2,200 new rooms have opened in Perth and there are over 2,500 new rooms under construction. This increase offers enormous opportunities for new jobs and tourism.