Storytelling Tourism Marketing:

from storytelling tours to virtual reality tours for the Unique Tourism Experience:

                                   Australia-Indonesia Tourism Forum

                                                                                Tuesday, 6 June, 2023

                                                       Bradley Forum (Level 5), Hawke Building, UniSA

                                                       (City West Campus, 55 North Terrace, Adelaide)

The storytelling tour marketing events were organised to offer an informative, engaging and valuable discussion forum and networking opportunity to the tourism industry professionals for storytelling tour development.  

As part of post-COVID-19 recovery strategies, we explore the best design of unique local storytelling tours for inspiring tourists in multiple ways, ranging from re-creating tour guides’ personal stories to showcasing virtual reality tours or awarded night vision-based tours.

The program covers key topics such as storytelling marketing strategies, storytelling tour designs in Australia and Indonesia, and virtual tour design. As one of the highlights, Steve Davis, Creative Director, ‘Talked about marketing’ presents the storytelling marketing strategies. The virtual reality tours of Coorong and Mt Crawford Forest areas are showcased at this event. It is expected to gain cross-cultural awareness of the unique cultural tourism attractions, local food, wildlife, and forest environment (including forest wellness experience) in the unexploited areas of Australia and Indonesia.

This event presents the top 10 keynote speakers from marketing experts, tourism academics, local/international tourism companies and virtual tour development company (the framework virtual reality specialist).

The interactive discussions and informative conversations are also organised for the industry experts to share their best business practices of storytelling tours or virtual reality tour design.

It is hoped that this event offers a great starting point for the business sector to gain cutting-edge knowledge about storytelling marketing practices and innovative virtual tour designs for storytelling-based tourism development which the industry can adapt to their own business in the future.

Event program 

Australia –

• Educational materials

WTA https://www.wildlifetourism.org.au/blog/events/

• Storytelling videos for Australia

https://vimeopro.com/jacobgates/unisa

UniSA Aise Kim Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lig6ad3TMhU&feature=youtu.be

• Virtual tour websites by UniSA and FrameworkVR

https://www.frameworkvr.com.au/projects/coorong-virtual-tour/

https://www.frameworkvr.com.au/projects/mount-crawford-virtual-tour/

Storytelling tours for Indonesia

• Educational materials for storytelling marketing

https://www.its.ac.id/sdg/id/

• Storytelling Videos

https://www.canva.com/design/DAFkMiUNlMw/t2pRXzER6vRFfrGvTCGGcg/edit?utm_content=DAFkMiUNlMw&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

Acknowledgement

This storytelling marketing forum is funded by the Australia-Indonesia Institute of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade with support from School of Business, University of South Australia. The ‘Australia-Indonesia Institute (AII) was established by the Australian Government in 1989 to contribute to a more broadly based and enduring relationship between Australia and Indonesia and to project positive images of Australia and Indonesia in each other's country’.

I would like to acknowledge my sincere thanks to all key speakers and project teams for their great contribution to this event and virtual tour development. 

I also take this opportunity to express a special gratitude to all industry contacts for their recommendation of key experts and promoting this event to their members. Special thanks are given to:

• Forestry SA (Andrew Dundon, Kieran Gosden, Laura Thomas, Rachel Godoy, Luke Hein)
• Murray River, Lakes and Coorong Tourism (Bill Nehmy)
• Coorong Council (Emily Brown, Kellie Jaensch)
• Tourism Industry Council South Australia (Shaun de Bruyn, Linda Lacey)
• South Australian Tourism Commission (April Dowdell)
• Adelaide Economic Development Agency (Sondra Stewart, Tourism Partnership Advisor)

Event Organisers:

I appreciate a great support of Professor Allan O’Connor and the professional staff (Paulina, Liam and Nancy) from Centre for Enterprise Dynamics in Global Economies (C-EDGE), School of Business, University of South Australia for organizing this event. I would like to thank student volunteers for their support for this event. Lastly, I would like to express my special gratitude to Australia-Indonesia Institute for virtual tour video development and industry engagement opportunities.

Australia-Indonesia Institute Project

 The project background:

This project is to develop a virtual reality tour for the local community in rural/remoted areas as part of post-COVID-19 recovery. As a result, the local communities get ultimate benefits from this project for promoting Australia’s native food identity, forests, wildlife, or local food tours through virtual educational tour development.  This project will provide the online showcase/workshop event to the local communities/students/tourism business communities in both Australia and Indonesia.  Virtual storytelling tours will introduce one of forest/national parks with an emphasis of Aboriginal food/local food, local culture, wildlife, forest conservation issues, and tour options.

 This virtual storytelling tour will NOT be used for commercial purpose at all. This is a government funded research project which helps for the local community’s training purpose as part of post-COVID-19 recovery. It will be ONLY used for educating/training/showcasing local communities/students/tour operators to teach how to design, develop, and work on the story-telling tour as well as educating *Australian forest environment to communities in Indonesia.

Note: * One of the main purposes of this project is to help out Indonesian communities to develop sustainable tourism products, especially in the remote forest areas as some challenging issues have arisen as part of the negative impacts of COVID-19. This project will improve economic capacity building and social wellbeing in Australia and Indonesia as a critical aspect of Covid-19 recovery, while reducing negative environmental challenges such as illegal logging or selling wildlife animals in the remote areas of Indonesia. Indonesian communities can learn from the best sustainable practices of forest tourism experience in Australia which highlight the diverse aspects of the forest environment including native food, wildlife, forest habits, local culture, conservation issues, etc. As a result, the Indonesian communities can also develop new forest tourism products for sustainable tourism outcomes, while addressing the importance of forest conservation issues. Online training, virtual tours, and events will be delivered to provide a pathway for local community leaders to network, discuss challenging issues and explore new economic opportunities, using the showcase storytelling tour video examples. The project will increase social and economic resilience within disadvantaged communities in both countries, with a focus on stimulating bilateral cultural and economic relationships and fostering best business practices of sustainable tourism and food diversity between Australia and Indonesia.

The benefits of the project:

1. It helps to develop the local community’s promotional tour video (with a focus of storytelling approach) for both general tours and educational programs
2. This new storytelling tour video can be used as an additional promotional video to current tourist markets for the involved tour operators
3. It enables for tour operators to create their own virtual tour which could be offered via online zoom, as tour operators have their storytelling guiding experience so the platform can be extended to alternative ways of online storytelling tours.

2022 the public forum

Wildlife Travels between Australia and Indonesia 

• Sunday afternoon 30th October 2022, Southbank, Brisbane. QCA Lecture Theatre and Gallery, Griffith University (Building S05, Southbank)
  • Public presentations and displays, 1.00 – 4.30pm, open to delegates and the general public. Free Entry. It can also be accessed by conference delegates via Teams.
  • 1.00 – 2.30pm Wildlife travels between Australia and Indonesia (two countries so close to each other, both with high biodiversity but so very different). Showcasing the cultural and natural attractions, including of course the wildlife, and presentation of a project for resilience of community tourism in both countries funded by the Australia-Indonesia Institute, led by WTA secretary Dr Aise Kim. Sample Indonesian food from the Ma Pa Me restaurant. 

For more information, click the link (https://www.wildlifetourism.org.au/blog/events/)