From 2005 to 2006 Maroochy Council was faced with the challenge of how to stop tourism figures from dwindling. Visitation decreased by 12.4%, visitor nights decreased by 12.5% and yield followed. Partnerships with tourism bodies such as Tourism Sunshine Coast and Tourism Queensland, combined with preliminary research executed by the Maroochy Tourism Industry Advisory Board (MTIAB) identified some key weaknesses in the promotion of the Maroochy region. Weaknesses that, if addressed, could add hundreds of millions of dollars to the local economy.

With research identifying that, a new and highly targeted website was essential to both increasing the positive economic impact of tourism and ensuring its sustainability in the future, the brand name discovermaroochy.com.au was launched with this specifically in mind. The website discovermaroochy.com.au  became the catalyst to a new, highly-targeted and fully-integrated promotional campaign that went on to include a portfolio of new brochures, extensive press, cinema and radio advertising, signage and public relations covering local, national and international markets.

The objective of the website was to increase visitation and yield in two important ways:

1. Increasing awareness of Maroochy and its diverse range of holiday experiences among targeted consumer groups

2. Give tourism operators the information and tools required to increase their involvement in Maroochy’s economic development

The discovermaroochy.com.au website was created around a ‘personality’ that depicted the Maroochy holiday experience – friendly, welcoming, safe and relaxed. With such a diversity of holiday, experiences on offer, the website aimed to evoke action both in pushing users to visit Maroochy and in participating in a wider range of activities once in the destination.

In January 2007, Maroochy Council (now Sunshine Coast Regional Council) began implementing the second stage of its marketing strategy, the creation of a website strategy for a sustainable future. For a three month period the most extensive consumer and industry research ever conducted in the region was undertaken to measure the success of the discovermaroochy.com.au website and identify what both types of users wanted from the website to ensure the highly enhanced electronic platform delivered a significant economic impact on the regional economy.

One of the major key findings from this research was that the internet was in fact the most popular source of information when planning a holiday and that 70% of the online respondents surveyed stated that they purchased services online – a capacity that was not yet available on the discovermaroochy.com.au website. Significantly, 47% of respondents stated they would have visited Maroochy destinations and participated in more activities had they been aware of them during the planning stage.

The launch of the new discovermaroochy.com.au website in May 2006 saw a massive 60% increase in hits to the site. The website strategy (January 2007) and subsequent execution of Stage 2A of the website upgrade in June 2007 has continued to see sustainable improvement in website hits with a 43% increase in average weekly hits between August 2006 and August 2007. Future sustainability is being ensured by Sunshine Coast Regional Council’s continued dedicated to implementing Stage 2B of the website upgrade.

Almost 650 tourism operators joined the discovermaroochy.com.au body since the launch of the website, with networking events reaching full capacity in some of Maroochy’s largest venues. 

Domestic tourists’ expenditure figures alone demonstrate the success of the discovermaroochy.com.au website, with tourists spending an extra $225M on the Sunshine Coast, showing an amazing 18.6% increase in spending in the year ending March 2007. This equates to the Sunshine Coast gaining a 7.1% increase in Queensland’s holiday market. 

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