In March, 2009, during hurricane Hamish, the MV Pacific Adventurer spilled 260 tonnes of fuel, along with 31 shipping containers housing 620 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, into the Coral Sea, just north of Brisbane, Australia

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In March, 2009, during hurricane Hamish, the MV Pacific Adventurer spilled 260 tonnes of fuel, along with 31 shipping containers housing 620 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, into the Coral Sea, just north of Brisbane, Australia. The following week the spillage washed ashore along 60 kilometres of coastline that included 4 popular beach destinations: Sunshine Coast, Moreton Bay, Bribie Island and Moreton Island. Affected areas included surf beaches, reefs and wetlands. Many of these areas has also already been battered by the cyclone. The ship continued through into the Port of Brisbane, leaving a 500 metre oil slick at the mouth of the Brisbane River. A state of emergency was declared by the Queensland state government, with Premier Anna Bligh describing the event as 'the worst environmental disaster Queensland has ever seen'. The spillage took 16 months of work by over 1,400 people to clean, at a direct cost of millions of dollars, along with the ensuing loss of revenue by affected businesses.

 

Nine days after the spill, Tourism Queensland announced details of a coordinated, cooperative campaign involving the STO and three RTOs: Brisbane Marketing, Tourism Sunshine Coats and Fraser Coast South Burnett Tourism. The aim was to reassure the domestic market an local residents that most beaches in south-east Queensland were open for business. The initiative was anchored by a AUD$750,000 television advertising campaign in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and northern New South Wales. Other tactics included:

-         A three-week newspaper campaign

-         A local radio blitz featuring celebrities

-         A special travel promotion via the STOs email newsletter to a database of over 400,000 contacts.

-         Updates to the local tourism industry encouraging them to make sure their staff had accurate information about the unaffected beach areas and operations.

-         A dedicated STO email account and phone hotline for tourism operators with any tourism related questions or concerns.

Today, the impacts of Covid-19 on the tourisms sector worldwide is unprecedented with the UNWTO reporting that every destination in the world having been affected by travel restrictions of some sort. Canada has not yet had the high numbers of Covid-19 cases that other countries are reporting although many borders are restricted or closed and Canada's NTO is describing the conditions as 'catastrophic'. One of the ways the NTO and local DMOs tried to counterbalance the steep tourism decline in the summer of 2020 was to target their promotions to the domestic audience - somewhat like Tourism Queensland did after the oil spill of 2009.

Discussion questions:

1.      Why did the DMO's target communications toward local domestic markets as a result of the crises described above?

2.      The future will see increasing DMO use of social media. Find and provide a social media example of a destination that targeted domestic markets in 2020 in response to Covid-19.