Beer Tourism with Kelly Ryan December 2022
Recently on Radio Brews News we discussed the Sunshine Coast’s beer-focused campaign, through which the regional tourism body is promoting Queensland’s Sunshine Coast as a craft beer destination to encourage tourism to the region. It makes the cheeky claim to be Australia’s Craft Beer Capital.
The campaign has sparked plenty of discussion in beer circles about whether the craft beer capital claim is reasonable but the point is, it’s sparked discussion about beer. It’s also arguably the most significant pro-brewery campaign that has been run by any organisation in the country. It also includes its own podcast series, Pursuit of Hoppiness. And that is a great thing for the entire industry, especially as it would appear to have spawned an “us too” campaign from South East Queensland’s other coast, the Gold Coast, which would appear to have put some resources into promoting its breweries since its beachy competitor’s campaign began.
This can only be good for the industry.
As such a significant campaign, we wanted to find out what the tourism body saw of value in the brewing industry where others have overlooked it. We also wanted to hear of the insights into the campaign, and importantly, how other brewing regions can engage with their local tourism body to drive interest in their breweries.
We reached out to Kelly Ryan, the Sunshine Coast’s Head of Marketing for her insights into the campaign. Kelly is responsible for overseeing the organisation’s promotion and advertising efforts to build awareness of the Sunshine Coast and lure more visitors to the destination. As you’ll hear she has a wealth of tourism marketing knowledge, drawing on extensive experience with Canberra’s major tourism body and major national attractions.
There’s a lot to learn about beer tourism in this BreweryPro episode.
Sources referenced by Kelly:
https://www.goldsteinresearch.com/report/australia-craft-beer-market
https://www.ibisworld.com/au/industry/craft-beer-production/5071/
