Has anyone out there noticed the use of the work “peak” in recent releases as the latest media qualifier?
Definition: (adj) approaching or constituting the maximum eg working at peak efficiency
A tapering, projected point, a pointed extremity
The pointed summit of a mountain
The mountain itself
I only draw attention to this as I was OUTRAGED when reading the Mercury article 31st May 2012 on $2 million to be spent on ‘revamping’ the ‘peak’ tourism website Discover Tasmania under a push to increase the social media and online marketing efforts of Tourism Tasmania.
The Budget estimates committee hearings are one of the few avenues where the public get to see some of these figures. The reading of this article just kept getting better.
“Tourism Minister Scott Bacon also said the state’s peak marketing body would spend $50,000 more on social media campaigns. The committee heard Tourism Tasmania had staff who dedicated 90% of their work day to maintaining the organisation’s accounts on social media sites including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The number of staff was not revealed”.
Perhaps Mr Bacon, himself, was feeling a bit peaky at this stage of the proceedings.
Did the budget estimates committee ask for the number of staff who ‘dedicate’ 90% of their work days twittering and facebooking? Aren’t they there to ask the tough questions? Another tough one: how do these staff ‘dedicate’ the other 10%? I want value for my buck.
The demography for this social media god is aged 13 – 23. This group don’t have the money. Pressing the ‘like’ button doesn’t translate into tourists coming here and spending money. Sure, it might make the Tourism Tasmania staff feel all warm and fuzzy but its effectiveness cannot be measured. Perfect!
$2 MILLION to be spent on a website that is already replicated elsewhere! Posts following this article voice their outrage as well. “As one of the original webmasters in the Tas government and an IT professional with over 25 yrs of experience all I can say is that this is just a con job. There is no way that it costs this amount of money unless you have a bunch of “mates” doing consultancy work. A competent in house programmer could do the same job for less than $90K in about 7-9 months if not less” Posted by: Mike Stone of Now of Thailand
Perhaps Tourism Tasmania should have a look at other, far better delivering tourism websites out there such as Trip Advisor and Lonely Planet who do their job for them by people who don’t get paid for sharing their knowledge.
Our mainland middle to big spend visitors (the ones we really want) think that Pure Tasmania is the government website.
‘The website will act as a portal to about 2,500 tourism businesses in the state.” What’s the bet that within 2 to 3 months, each of these tourism businesses will be asked to pay a hefty amount for the privilege.
“Mr Bacon said Tourism Tasmania had been restructured and was now solely a dedicated marketing organisation”. Good. Then stop wasting huge amounts of money on useless, non-producing social media bs and spend it advertising in newspapers and television on the mainland as every other successful business does. They wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t work.
Let’s not forget $400,000 for a new state brand to define the “essence” of tourism experiences in this state. I marvel at the people who think this stuff up.
Have we now reached the ‘peak’, the pointy end in tourism? Are we there yet?
If we have, the only place to go from here is down.
• Hannah Martin, Sunday Tasmanian: Incat floats fast-ferry plan
BASS Strait could be transformed into a highway, with a new ship capable of completing the crossing three times a day.
Tasmanian shipbuilders Incat are proposing to build a ship that could make the journey in less than five hours.
It could carry 2000 passengers, 500 cars and 100 trucks on each trip.
It would potentially facilitate travel for 6000 people each day.
Incat owner Robert Clifford believes the 150m-long vessel, worth about $200 million, would be the largest passenger ship ever built in Australia.
He said it would be cheaper to run, resulting in lower passenger and freight costs.
The idea was raised after criticism last week of rising costs and lack of space for motorhomes on existing ferry services.
He said the carbon tax and new international fuel emission regulations that come into effect in 2015 would further blow out operating costs for the Spirit of Tasmania.
“I’m of the opinion that [in] between two and five years there will be a need for replacement ships for Bass Strait,” he said.
“They can be ships like they are today, with different types of engines and different types of fuel burns, or they can be completely different boats.”
Mr Clifford said his company could build a new ship in three to five years that would run on an environmentally friendly liquid natural gas.
It would be a “mini cruise ship” with theatres, restaurants, shops and rest areas. The ship would weigh 25,000 tonnes.
“To get that into perspective, that’s double the size of the Empress of Australia that used to come into Tasmania. She was only 12,000 [tonnes],” he said.
