After much consultation with our member base and stakeholders, the TTNQ Board has signed off the strategy to take our organisation forward and grow visitation to Tropical North Queensland. The marketplace has evolved greatly since our last strategic direction was conceived, so we focused on TTNQ’s key role of destination marketing and set goals to ensure that would remain our primary driver.
As a result, the TTNQ 2018-2020 Strategic Direction sets the agenda for the organisation to shift gears, unite the industry and lead the way forward to the vision of becoming one of the world’s most inspiring nature-based destinations. This two-year direction will enable TTNQ, as a destination marketing organisation, to move quickly in a fast-changing and competitive world to ensure Tropical North Queensland is the destination people around the world want to visit.
It will do this through six strategic goals:
- Mastering Our Story – To deliver world-class, innovative destination marketing the entire industry needs to use a common, shared narrative when promoting the destination. Tropical North Queensland is the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, but we are so much more. In a diverse destination like ours we have hundreds of stories that contribute to what we are as a destination. TTNQ’s role is to drive a whole-of-region communication engagement story to help curate and share these stories. The best way to do this is to align with Tourism Australia’s Signature Experiences. We are doing this by creating cluster groups of experiences and working with operators interested in those areas to develop their story. These experience stories will then be fed into a whole of region communication engagement story which TTNQ and the tourism industry can use as part of our marketing and public relations.
- Unite and Partner – TTNQ is a lighthouse for the Tropical North Queensland tourism industry. We will unite, lead and set a clear strategic direction for the industry to ensure everyone is on the same pathway. This will involve developing influential relationships that amplify the region’s marketing and show tourism as the major regional economic driver. Our partnerships tap into the extensive network of people and industries outside the traditional tourism industry. As a result the tourism industry will be consulted as a key player in the economic future of Tropical North Queensland and new partnerships will further drive economic development of the region through tourism.
- Digital Leverage – Destination marketing revolves around the digital space so we will reprioritise our resources and find smarter ways of doing business to better leverage the digital space. We will build the digital capability of the Tropical North Queensland tourism industry to give the destination a stronger voice in the competitive digital world. This work has already started with digital capacity building workshops, an expansion of the TTNQ digital team and a shift towards agile project-driven collaborations. We are developing a Digital Strategy and will invest in software and hardware that supports our digital transformation.
- Improve Membership – TTNQ will improve our relationship and relevance to members to ensure we support them as key drivers of the destination vision to become one of the world’s most inspiring nature-based destinations. We have started this process by actively listening to members and stakeholders to develop the TTNQ 2018-2020 Strategic Direction. We will develop a Membership Strategy offering membership value and growth and maintain our relevance by being at the forefront of changes and opportunities relating to destination marketing. We will continue to build the capabilities of the region through initiatives such as the Australian Small Business Advisory Services Program.
- Continuously Improve – We will aggressively reduce internal red-tape, drive efficiency and embed an agile mind set within the cultural DNA of TTNQ. This will involve building our governance and leadership capacity, actively managing asset utilisation, adopting relevant technologies to assist with our continuous improvement and fostering a culture of innovation. We have started this process by introducing 90-day sprint reviews to measure strategy progress and develop ways to work around any road blocks.
- Reset Finance and Resources – TTNQ will strengthen our capacity to manage our funding. Currently member funds contribute about 10% of revenue, with the balance coming from Cairns Regional Council, grants and industry co-operatives. We are looking to continue to evolve as an organisation, with a structure and strategy that will increasingly be resilient, self-sustaining and relevant into the future.
We know Tropical North Queensland deserves to be on everyone’s travel plans, but we need to find the right way to share that knowledge. The TTNQ 2018-2020 Strategic Direction is a step forward to achieving the vision of becoming one of the world’s most inspiring nature-based destinations.
Wendy Morris
TTNQ Chair