14 December 2009

Australia to farewell Best Job in World winner

The Best Job in the World, part of a world-wide competition for a caretaker for Queensland’s Hamilton, will wrap up at the end of this week with a farewell to the winner.

Briton Ben Southall, who beat 34,000 people to win the AU$150,000 job on the Great Barrier Reef, has spent the past six months travelling around the state and blogging his adventures as part of a Tourism Queensland campaign to increase the numbers of local and overseas tourists.

Overseas tourists, unless they have an Australian or New Zealand passport must have an Australian Tourist Visa. The most popular of these is the ETA Visa, which allows the holder to spend up to three months in the country for tourism purposes.

As the ETA Visa is electronically attached to the holder’s passport it is quick to apply for online, and once approved the holder may pass through Australian Immigration when they arrive in the country.

Tourism Queensland has not released details on how they might build on the momentum of this year's award-winning AU$2.5 million marketing campaign, which generated an estimated $400 million in global media coverage, and some tourism officials have admitted that it may take time to see tourist numbers climb.

Queensland Tourism Industry Council chief executive Daniel Gschwind said the translation of the huge marketing success the campaign had seen into actual business should flow for some time.

"It may take a couple of years to see how it's worked out but there has certainly been some evidence to suggest there has been some response in the market," he said.

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The Australian Visa Bureau is an independent consulting company specialising in helping people lodge their Australian Visa applications with the Australian Embassy.