Social media and digital advertising will be a key pillar of the North East’s Destination Action Plan, according to North East Tourism Tasmania chairwoman Jessica Carins.
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The North East DAP was released last week and outlines four key priorities for the region to increase its tourism numbers and boost economic growth.
This includes a pledge to improve tourism marketing campaigns and visitor communication.
Ms Carins said the plan’s committee and North East Tourism Tasmania will work together to create a #NorthEastTasmania tourism campaign over multiple social media platforms.
“We really want to heavily use social media and online in creating a marketing plan, which will include creating a #NorthEastTasmania hashtag, and creating new social media accounts for the campaign,” Ms Carins said.
“We’ve also got a local marketing firm who has developed a North East Tasmania tourism app, where businesses can load their details.”
Dorset mayor Greg Howard said it was essential for the region to modernise and use social media to attract more tourists.
“A lot of people when they’re travelling these days, they look at social media and they look at websites and all that,” Cr Howard said.
“The old tourist information centre may still survive, but they’re probably going to take a bit more of a backseat to social media and electronic forms of advertising.”
Another primary objective in the action plan is for businesses to work together to draw more visitors to the area.
Ms Carins said it was also “in [the action] plan to foster and encourage businesses to move” into digital marketing.
However, Ms Carins and Cr Howard both conceded that business digital literacy rates were relatively low in the area.
Cr Howard said it was essential for more businesses to carve out a digital identity to help the region grow.
“There a few [businesses] that are not quite as well connected as they probably should be at the moment,” he said.
“But most of those that have got a bit of vision understand the need to be connected via the internet and via Facebook and social media outlets.”