New Australian Tourism Ads Focus on Vaccines

Tourism Australia realizes you can’t put the cart before the horse.

So the country’s new ad campaign focuses less on tourism, per se, and more on what people need to do before they can enjoy the Sydney Opera House or snorkel the Great Barrier Reef or visit Brisbane or Melbourne.

They need to get vaccinated.

Using the tagline “It’s Our Best Shot for Travel,” the mew campaign launched domestically in Australia today, August 16, in newspapers, on TV, online and across social media.

“We need to claim back our way of life so that we can visit friends and relatives, get back into the workplace, get our kids back to school, travel domestically and internationally again, and welcome the world back to enjoy all that Australia has to offer,” Phillipa Harrison, managing director of Tourism Australia (the country’s official national tourism board) said in a press statement according to CNN.

Australia has been among the hardest-hit countries by the COVID-19 pandemic, to the point where the government has even de-emphasized travel within its own borders.

According to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, jobs in the tourism industry fell 18 percent year-on-year from 2019 to 2020.

Though Australia has been relatively successful in keeping out the virus, the country’s vaccination program got off to a slow start. About 20 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated as of August 16.

Following lockdowns in Sydney last week, a new batch of Pfizer vaccines in New South Wales state has been earmarked for people in the 20-39 age demographic, the first time this group has been specifically targeted. Before this, health care workers and the elderly were first in line for the shots.

Another campaign backed by the tourism authority is due to launch later this year. It will be titled “Put a Jab on the Menu” and feature some of Australia’s celebrity chefs.