South Australia’s Great State Voucher program has been hailed as Australia’s most successful state tourism stimulus, delivered by the South Australian Tourism Commission (SATC) utilising leading marketplace provider, Nabooki, for onboarding, front line support and the back-end technology. With each voucher dollar spent resulting in an impressive $6.31 revenue for the economy, record high 67% redemption rate and an estimated $90 million injected into the state’s economy so far, the immense success of the Great State Voucher is evident*. The successful initiative has rebooted travel throughout the state, motivated South Australians to enjoy new tourism experiences in their state (59% booked experiences they were not previously aware of), whilst helping to keep businesses open and staff employed in a challenging time.
Speaking of the Great State Voucher scheme, South Australian Premier Steven Marshall commented that the “data shows time and time again that this [the Great State Voucher] is a proven stimulus with an incredible return on investment. It generates bookings for business, gets staff rostered on, and creates spending flow-on”. ** The travel vouchers for tours, hosted experiences and for use on accommodation, have also received great industry response from around 500 operators onboarded via the Nabooki platform. South Australian Tourism Commission credited Nabooki with “delivering a successful voucher programme for our operators which makes a real difference to their businesses and lives… The amount of work [Nabooki] have done and overall commitment to the cause is just so impressive” – Martin Kaesler, Business Manager, International Marketing, SATC.
*Statistics and data sourced from the latest round of SATC analysis
**Premier’s announcement
Nabooki’s leading edge intuitive booking platform and marketplace offers customers a seamless user journey and booking interface experience, which South Australia credits for the record redemption rates achieved. Belinda Barton, Manager, Trade Events, Famils & Projects at SATC commented “The user experience was so good and this was the reason for high redemption, as consumers could…easily book their preferred product experiences.” The Great State Voucher garnered strong industry support from tourism operators with analysis demonstrating the voucher had an overwhelmingly positive business impact. Recognition was complimentary of the onboarding process, marketplace booking system and future participation interest. Prior to the stimulus, South Australia’s tourism industry had been devastated due to the loss of key interstate markets. “This programme has been a lifeline [for South Australian tourism operators]. This is exactly how a purpose built government stimulus should be” commented Belinda Barton, Manager, Trade Events, Famils & Projects, SATC.
Benefits also extended beyond short term gain for participating operators
Commenting on the program’s success, South Australia Tourism Commission hailed Nabooki’s ‘incredible project management skills, amazing can do attitude, high level of attention to detail and highly valued constructive criticism’ to the benefit of the program’s development. “Being able to spend time with Nabooki on the detail has meant that the overall process has vastly improved” said Belinda Barton, Manager, Trade Events, Famils & Projects, SATC. Belinda highlighted that Nabooki care and “think about what the customer [SATC] wants in terms of evaluating costs of development and advising if the benefits are warranted for the value, so I think that is really important”, key for a government funded program. Additionally, Nabooki’s marketplace was robustly and intuitively set up to ensure all necessary checks were in place as required to deliver a government funded stimulus program.
Further rounds of the Great State Voucher Program
The Great State Voucher program returned in February 2022, with a record high 160,000 vouchers across accommodation, tours and experiences. This program, powered by Nabooki, is set to pump another $54 million into the South Australian economy, taking the total economic impact to around $149 million.
“Not only do the vouchers generate tens of thousands of bookings across accommodation, tours and experiences, consumer surveys show it creates expenditure well over the value of the voucher booking. Data shows it creates an average expenditure of $561 when booking a stay in the CBD, $602 for a regional stay, and $462 when booking a tour or experience with a $100 experience voucher.” – Rodney Harrex, Chief Executive, SATC
