Tourism Australia launches Restaurant Australia campaign

Move over France, step aside Italy – Australian dining is going global. Sure, we Australians know how lucky we are in the food and wine department, but Tourism Australia wants the rest of the world to share the excitement, too, and they’re putting the message out there via Restaurant Australia, their latest creative campaign, which launched in Sydney this morning.

“What our research shows is that people who haven’t come to Australia don’t necessarily rate food and wine as something they associate the country with,” says Tourism Australia’s managing director John O’Sullivan. However, that same research shows that those who have visited, mostly from China, the UK, America, France, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea, rank their dining experiences in Australia as the second best in the world, between number one culinary destination France and number three Italy. “Food and wine is a massive driver of international tourism, so we really wanted to take this opportunity to ride the wave of food and wine tourism and showcase everything that’s great about Australia.”

The $10-million campaign, including TV, print and online advertisements and a series of events, puts the spotlight on some of Australia’s most exceptional food and drink experiences – oyster tasting at Saffire Freycinet in Tasmania, dining in the laneways of Melbourne, and catching lobster off Western Australia’s Rottnest Island, to name a few.

“For those people who have been here before, I think it will just reinforce what they already know,” says O’Sullivan. “For people who haven’t been, I think it’ll highlight these pillars of people, place and produce. That we have fantastic, friendly people involved in food and wine. That we have this wonderful, safe and organic produce, and these incredible places where you can experience them.”

And the campaign has the support of some pretty high-profile Australian chefs, too, Rockpool’s Neil Perry and Quay’s Peter Gilmore among them. “We have an incredible food and wine culture and really we do need to shout about it a bit,” says Gilmore. “It’s lovely that it’s combined with the environment that we live in, the whole feeling of our culture and our outdoor life, and how that’s combined with food and wine experiences is really good to show off.”