Tourists lured with Aussie film
2008-06-17 21:16
Rob Taylor
Canberra - An epic Australian
outback movie starring Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman and
Hugh Jackman will spearhead a new tourism campaign designed to
recapture the country's "mojo" and lure more visitors Down
Under.
Titled Australia and directed by flamboyant home-grown
director Baz Luhrmann, the A$130m film
follows an English aristocrat (Kidman) who inherits a sprawling
property and falls in love with a rugged drover (Jackman).
With sweeping Outback scenery and set in northern Australia
on the eve of World War Two, Australia will see Kidman and
Jackman take 2 000 cattle overland and caught in the wartime
bombing of Darwin by the Japanese.
"This movie will potentially be seen by tens of millions of
people and it will bring to life little-known aspects of
Australia's extraordinary natural environment, history, and
indigenous culture," Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson said at
the weekend.
Biggest boost
Tourism Australia will kick off an international marketing
campaign to coincide with the film's planned release in
November, Ferguson said.
The epic was tipped to bring the
biggest boost to tourism since Crocodile Dundee in 1986.
Some cinema critics have predicted the film will be an
amalgam of Australian cliches.
But tourism industry officials are hopeful the movie epic
will kickstart the country's tourist arrivals which have
stagnated since the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
The film, Luhrmann's first film since Moulin Rouge in 2001,
has been shot on location in the remote Kimberley region of
Western Australia, the Northern Territory capital Darwin and
the tropical city of Bowen.
Controversial campaign
Australia's government recently dumped the controversial
A$180m "Where the bloody hell are you?" tourism campaign
featuring a bikini model, which was banned in Britain and
Canada.
Ferguson has flagged a new international campaign
presenting Australia for the next three years as a "mature,
inviting country", while riding on the expected popularity of
Australia with international audiences.
Tourism numbers have fallen off recently in the face of a
Australian dollar approaching parity with the US greenback
and with rising fuel and airline ticket prices keeping many
potential visitors away.
Tourism industry spokesperson Christopher Brown this month
lamented that Australians had "lost our mojo" for tourists.
Tourism data in April showed signs of weakness from key
markets including Japan, Hong Kong and Britain.
Holidaymakers
Overseas
arrivals were down 1.2% in February and 0.7% in
January.
Holidaymakers injected A$85bn into the A$1 trillion
economy in 2006 to 2007, with overseas visitors accounting for
A$22bn of that, according to the latest Australia Bureau
of Statistics data.
Tourism accounted for 3.7% of the Australian economy,
but overseas arrivals were down 1.2% in February.
A Tourism Australia official this week told the Sydney
Morning Herald newspaper that Australia would be "basically a
two and a half hour ad" for the country.
- Reuters