Destination Digital
Website, SOCIAL & EDM

Bundaberg’s ‘Always On’ digital strategy continue to drive significant benefits to the region by engaging digitally savvy travelers at multiple stages within the path to purchase in order the influence decision making.

We are constantly creating content worth sharing and telling the stories of our destination. Our followers are active and engaged, and our campaigns are targeted, creative and focussed on experience promotion with an authentic local voice. As a result, we are seeing increased engagement and strong website visitation.

Destination Website

The Destination Website is like our shopfront - it's where potential guests come to find out about us and to consider booking a holiday with us.  A good website gives us credibility and makes us more desirable as a destination.

The Destination Website is curated to offer integrated content and drive consumers down the funnel increasing website traffic and extended dwell time across pages.

So lets break that down into something that's easier to understand.

HOW IS THE WEBSITE DESIGNED?

Firstly, the website is broken into sections based around what our consumers are looking for.  These are:

Reef; Turtles; and Taste - our hero experiences

Stay; Play; and Explore - the core information our guests want to see including the accommodation, things to do and sub-regions of the destination; and

Events; Stories; and Deals - the inspiring content including our blog

From these sections, our guests are led towards experiences they are interested in, and many experiences they may not know yet they are interested in!

Every page is built with a similar layout:

The header, which may be a large hero image or experience, or a gallery of pictures taken from around the region;

The introduction, which summarizes what they will find on the page - we often also put an ad (called an MREC) here to drive attention to a product, event or experience;

Then we go into the content.  This is made up of a collection of must do's, blogs, experiences and deals that inspire people, raise awareness of the broad variety of things to do in the region, and push them towards committing to a holiday and making a booking.

WHY IS IT DESIGNED THIS WAY?

The longer a potential guest stays on the Destination Website and the more pages they engage with during their session, the more likely they are to commit to visiting the Bundaberg region.  So everything we do is designed to keep them with us and encourage them to have a longer holiday with more experiences that meet their personal needs.

The marketing team is constantly working to ensure that Bundaberg's Destination Website is in line with industry best practice.  Websites and the trends and expectations of the people using them are constantly evolving, so we have to stay on top of what are the ways that other brands and destination are talking to their customers through their websites and learning from their successes (and yes, sometimes their mistakes!).

HOW DO WE GET PEOPLE TO THE WEBSITE?

Our Destination Website is where we direct all of our marketing to.  Our social media, our digital advertising, our print advertising - it's all sending people to the website where we can inspire and educate our guests about the Region.

We have a variety of strategies to ensure that the Destination Website appears as high in our guests' search results across the website too, so that people looking for us can find us easily, and so that people looking for competing destination or experiences find us instead.

If this sounds like a big job, it's because it is!  We work hard to ensure the website works well.  The BT Marketing Team is constantly uploading new content, refreshing existing content, refining pages and generally making sure the website is the best it can be.  We are led by the consumer's experience first and foremost.

HOW DO YOU GET YOUR BUSINESS ON THE DESTINATION WEBSITE?

All Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze members who operate within the Bundaberg and North Burnett LGA boundaries are entitled to at least one business listing on the Destination Website.  Eligible Visitor Services members can add a website listing to their membership too for a small fee.

Currently, members' website listings are pulled from BookEasy.  Over 2022/23, we will move this information over to a free listing on the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse or ATDW.

We also use BookEasy’s Package module on the website to allow users to put multiple experiences and accommodation in their shopping cart, or book ready-made package with one click. These bookable listings and packages are supported through social amplification which sees positive engagement from consumers both organically and paid.

Alternative our guests can click from our website onto yours (we call this a "lead to operator") so they can book directly with you.

  MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR MEMBERSHIP

The more you appear on the website and the better the quality of content that appears, the more our 360,000+ unique visitors can engage with you and your experience.  There are a few simple ways to have more of an impact on our website:

Make sure your BookEasy listing or ATDW listing is up to date
Our wonderful Visitor Information Centre team can help you to update your information or images, and to connect your booking system to BookEasy - for more details, click here;

Deals are a very engaging way to get noticed.
A deal can be a % off your product, a package with value adds, such as free late check out or a bottle of wine or arrival, a Stay and Pay offer (e.g. Stay 7 Nights, Pay For 5), or a collaboration with another operator.  These can be bookable through us or directly through you.  Send us details of your deal (including a description, image, booking link and full T&Cs) and we'll pop it onto our Deals page, which is always in our top 5 most visited pages.  Load your deal into ATDW for extra coverage through Queensland.com

If you have news, let us know!
Whether it's a new product, tour or experience, or have introduced something small to your day-to-day operations, we can help you to find the right way to talk about it.  Pick up the phone or send us an email - you'd be surprised how excited we can get about something you thought was small!

Let us know how we can be better
If you spot a mistake, identify an opportunity or just think you should be included somewhere on the website that you currently are not, we want to hear it!  As a member, this is your website so tell us how we could make it better.

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