Tennis Travel & Sportsnet Holidays Banners

I got this photo off our Sportsnet Holidays facebook site. It was taken during the 2009 Australian Open and I am angling to use it in our Australian Open 2010 marketing. As the enquires are starting to flow for Wimbledon 2009 and The French Open I was thinking how I would love to see one of our role out banners at either event. While they are great for the Open in Melbourne where the fans have alot of fun they don't seem very Lawn Tennis or Roland Garros.

We also just got a new offical image for the 2010 Hopman Cup I have been pleasantly suprised by how many people have got themselves organised to sign up for the Hopman Cup and The 2010 Australian Open.

Sports travel is the best reward or incentive to use in product promotions or loyalty programs.

One of the fun things about being involved with a successful sports travel and sports tours company is getting involved with sports personalities and the media. Most people do get a thrill (me included) when they see something they have done, organised or been in appear in the media. We have always tried to develop relationships with marketing companies and brands who are looking for product promotions and prizes to utilise in a marketing campaign or to use for their loyalty and incentive marketing.

I read a survey once that basically said employees and customers like; time off, cash or travel as a reward or incentive. While there is plenty of big travel brands out there we have made a great niche for ourselves combining sports and travel for use in loyalty programs and product promotions and it's allot of fun. Lets face it we all like to travel and we all like to attend big name events. So last year I had the buzz of walking around a supermarket chain knowing we were the guys sending the prize winner to their choice of one of the worlds greatest sporting events. Similarly I also got the buzz each time I opened a certain chocolate bar to see another one of our promotions which included a well known local TV personality, what can I say chocolate, travel, sport and celebrity, if only i could have got red wine in there it would have been near perfect.

Although we have developed a good rapport with a TV station and a couple of well known incentive marketing agencies you don't get many employee incentive bookings or household name product promotions is a week but when they come it really adds to the buzz about the place, if only I could stick our brand name all over them then everything would be perfect.

We got a few on the boil at the moment, a large building company supplier and Pedders is being rolled out right now.

What do you think ? Are sports travel experiences the best way to promote a product or develop customer and staff loyalty ?

2009 Australian Grand Prix will be a winner.

The first Grand Prix event of 2009 is now within sight and there is lots of concern about how the Global Financial crisis will affect the Aussie Grand Prix event.
If the Australian Open Tennis is anything to go by then it will go off. The tennis was packed, Melbourne was really humming and despite 40C plus days the stars really turned it on.
We had our biggest year for the tennis ever and even ended up with Wimbledon and French Open bookings as a result of all the online enquires so I think the Grand Prix will be a scorcher.
Why will it work ? The tennis has helped to focus the publics’ sporting eye on Melbourne which always helps. The Australian Formula One Grand Prix is the first race of the year so for petrol heads like us there are new cars, new teams, new gear for the fans and plenty of low down on who is doing what, where and with whom. The race has had a bit of a makeover after being re-secured for Melbourne which will give it a lift. The Albert Park Grand Prix course is a classic with a good balance between a street circuit like the Monaco GP and a track like the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. The prepping of the track kicks off this month which really builds the buzz. Moving the Melbourne F1 to the end of March will make it less likely to be really hot and with Easter around the corner numbers should be up were as in previous years it had been hard on the heels of the tennis and the AFL pre-season competition and in life, as in sport, timing is everything. There are some more concrete indicators that this year it will go well for Grand Prix travel and these are; we have had more advance bookings this year than in other years and the enquires are there even before the big guns have started with all the PR and marketing bizzo. So I think the pessimists be dammed, the 2009 Australian Grand Prix should get the numbers, maybe not the corporate clients but so what, it’s the fans, the teams and the drivers that make an event not how many accountants turn up. With so many international sporting events in Europe and the America’s it’s a great time of year for us, after the Melbourne Grand Prix it is into Asia with the 3 S’s, Sepang (Malaysian Grand Prix), the Singapore F1 and Shanghai and with only a 2 hour time difference meaning we can watch it live without getting up a 4am, so bring on the 2009 GP season.