Our Brief

• To stimulate media interest about Cairns International Hotel’s products and services; and
• To promoting the Tropical North Queensland region as a destination by generating positive media coverage

Our Work

In November 2007 McMillan Communicators developed a national media familiarisation opportunity for our client Cairns International Hotel to showcase its diverse portfolio of luxury accommodation as well as promoting Tropical North Queensland’s most picturesque national parks, natural beauty and cultural heritage.

Over the years, McMillan Communicators has established a network of collaborative partners and stakeholders from within the travel and tourism industry.  Due to these pre-existing relationships, McMillan Communicators approached the following tourism leaders for media familiarisation support:

• Virgin Blue and Tourism Queensland
• Tourism Tropical North Queensland
• Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park

Our Results

Virgin Blue and Tourism Tropical North Queensland’s Destination Media and Publicity Unit supported Cairns International Hotel in this media familiarisation by providing airfares to fly the journalists to Cairns.

Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park, with the support of Kuranda Scenic Railway and the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway also sponsored a full day trip experience of Tropical North Queensland’s most iconic, national parks for the journalists during the media familiarisation.

Due to our strong relationships with Travel Editors and Editors all around Australia we had no problems in securing our targeted media outlets to attend. The media that came on this media familiarisation were as follows:

Tony Magnusson – Sunday Telegraph Magazine

Lisa Capozzi – Cumberland Newspapers

Justine Reilly – Brisbane News

Kristie Kellahan – The Sun Herald

David Stockman – Leader Newspapers

David Lacey – The Sunday Telegraph

In addition a number of key opportunities during the familiarsiation were generated; including:

• The opportunity to work with journalists in generating strong story angles;
• The opportunity to create and suggest further media and publicity opportunities; and
• The opportunity to obtain intelligence regarding when stories will be printed

Our Success

• Extensive and diverse media coverage was achieved in terms of the geographical locations where the stories were placed
• Our client and the destination both received sensational publicity out of this activity

Media clippings amplifying this are available upon request.