How TM’s bespoke content strategy increased Norfolk Island website visitation by over 48%, broadened visitor demographics, increased bookings and led to extra flights – all in the midst of a global pandemic.
The Challenge
Norfolk Island is heavily reliant on tourism and was economically devastated by travel restrictions imposed due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Compounding the effect was the prevailing notion that Norfolk Island was primarily a destination for older travellers (ages 60+), positioning it well off the radar for the wider travelling community.
Norfolk Island reached out to Tourism Media to develop a content strategy to help with their tourism recovery once travel restrictions lifted, and to reposition the island to a younger travelling market.
Our Approach
We worked closely with Norfolk Island Tourism to define a long-term digital strategy that built on their existing brand premise, vision and core values, while communicating the destination’s key experiences and attributes to a much broader audience across a range of defined media channels.
For Norfolk Island’s website we created a new information architecture, reworked the design to provide a better user experience and updated it with over 130 custom written pages of unique content, thousands of new images and a series of specifically focused videos.
To target new audiences and grow traffic to the website, we also produced a range of video, photographic and written content for Norfolk Island’s Facebook, Instagram and YouTube channels that also supported Norfolk Island’s existing social media strategy.
To round out the strategy, we then provided Norfolk Island with an extensive image and video library along with a range of resources and brand style guides to enable them to continue to independently execute the strategy into the future.
The Results
Visitor numbers: At the beginning of 2021, Norfolk Island tourism industry experienced a rapid recovery. An increase of demand saw accommodation options booking out months in advance with additional flights added to help service increased visitor demand. Visitation not only returned to pre-COVID numbers, but quickly aligned to meeting the originally projected 2020 goals.
Site Traffic: Traffic to Norfolk Island’s website has increased by 48% and user engagement is up 46%. We also noted a flattening of the demographic curve, with increases in site visitation percentages from the age groups 25-35 and 35-44. This aligns with one of Norfolk Island’s initial goals of shifting down the general visitor demographic to the island.
YouTube: Norfolk Island’s YouTube channel has reported an increase in viewership and an elevated ranking on search results when searching Norfolk Island. This will invariably lead to more exposure of the Norfolk Island YouTube channel.
Cohesive narrative: The website is now updated with visually impressive, SEO optimised and emotive content, which ties all of Norfolk Island’s tourism assets into one cohesive narrative.
What the client says
“As a destination reliant solely on tourism, Norfolk Island suffered devastating repercussions when COVID-19 travel restrictions forced borders to close. Norfolk Island Regional Council urgently reached out to Tourism Media for tourism destination recovery advice. Their prompt development of a digital online strategy proposal was admirable, as was their enthusiasm and passion to deliver the project. Tourism Media even adapted their proposal to align with our overall strategy and spent a considerable amount of time and care understanding our vision and key values to integrate the content strategy accordingly. Thanks to Tourism Media, destination Norfolk Island has experienced a rapid tourism recovery. Norfolk Island Tourism has gained an extensive library of high quality photographic and video content plus comprehensive workbooks and guidelines, and now boasts a structured and optimised website showcasing the many experiences Norfolk has to offer. The Tourism Media team are amazing… personable, helpful, patient, knowledgeable, and offer terrific advice and support in a prompt and professional manner!”
Rose Evans
Team Leader Tourism & Heritage
Norfolk Island Regional Council
