ShareThis

Tuesday 30 December 2008

Tasmania's healthy hotel bookings buck national figures


Source: ABC

Tasmania is bucking the national trend when it comes to hotel occupancy.

Bookings are strong across the state right up until February.

Steve Old from Australian Hotels Association says however work needs to be done to attract business after February.

"The first thing that we should be doing is investing money into destinational marketing and continue to promote Tasmania and get people down here," he said.

"We've done a great job with the Tasmania movie ads off the Australia movie and a number of other things.

"But we can't stop there.

"This is the perfect opportunity for us to really do some marketing to make sure that come March-April we really turn the corner and we don't have to go through a lull."

While the industry is buoyed by the latest hotel figures it is bracing for a downturn.

Daniel Hanna of the Tourism Council says Tasmania boasts a number of unique events at this time of the year and the full impact of the global credit crunch will not be felt for a few months.

Mr Hanna says the state will have to market itself aggressively if it is to stay ahead of the game.

"We don't know as a state how we'll hold up," he said.

"We are hoping that Tasmania can hold up better than other states and if we're aggressive in the market and promote ourselves strongly there's no reason why we can't grab a bigger slice of the national pie even though that pie may be shrinking."

Book Your Travel with Wego