A campaign aimed at bringing Brisbane residents to Dunedin for a winter escape has been applauded after a report showed a spike in airline bookings from the Australian city.
Council entity Enterprise Dunedin tabled a report on the campaign at yesterday's economic development committee meeting. Councillors were full of praise for the results, which included Air New Zealand bookings to Dunedin from Brisbane increasing by 25% over the last sale period. Passenger numbers were not provided.
The campaign also resulted in a sharp increase in the amount of engagement in Enterprise Dunedin's internet presence. This included more than 6800 people living within a 25km radius of Brisbane visiting the city's main tourism website between April and June, a 342% increase on last year.
The campaign, which focused on having a ''wild winter'' in Dunedin and highlighted events and the city's unique wildlife, had a total budget of $96,000.
Of that, $41,000 was funded by Enterprise Dunedin, matched by $31,000 in of cash contributions and $24,000 worth of in-kind contributions from industry partners.
In response to questioning from Cr Mike Lord, Enterprise Dunedin destination manager Ryan Craig said the city needed to keep investing ''seed money'' if it wanted to keep up with other New Zealand centres when it came to competing for the tourist dollar.
Enterprise Dunedin was also praised over a report detailing the city's media presence in national and international publications. This included a story about the Cadbury Jaffa Race on Baldwin St published on a Chinese website with a readership of more than 289 million.
Mr Craig said the Jaffa Race and nude rugby were always the events which attracted the most international attention.
In response to a question from Cr Lee Vandervis about how the city could take advantage of the interest in the Jaffa Race, he said Enterprise Dunedin was looking at ways to get the Dunedin logo printed on Baldwin St.
