Tourism Australia helps to plan holiday through Facebook app

The app provides users with location-specific snapshots, information about friends who have visited the destination along with their tagged photos and comments they posted about their travel experience.

Plan a trip to Australia with the help of Tourism Australia's first Facebook application known as 'Discover Australia Through Your Friends', which enables travellers to plan their holiday in Australia through their friends.

The application is a combination of Google Map and Facebook technology which creates the travel planning tool that not only helps to choose where in Australia to go, but also provides advices from friends who may already have visited there. The app provides users with location-specific snapshots of the places that their Facebook friends have visited, photos they may have tagged and comments they may have posted about their travel experiences.

The user has to first visit Tourism Australia's Facebook page, 'Like' the page and click on the 'Discover Now' tab. After joining, the application page opens to show a map of Australia with posts from the user's friends. As the user clicks on the post or snapshot on the map, he or she can know more about the place and plan the holiday.

Andrew McEvoy, managing director, Tourism Australia believes that the new app will be welcomed both by travellers and the Australian tourism industry. "We know from research that more and more travellers are turning to their social media networks for inspiration to help them plan and get the best out of their holidays. And this innovative social media tool will make word of mouth from your trusted network of Facebook friends even more powerful," says McEvoy in an official communiqué.

The app also includes recommended attractions and experiences earlier uploaded by travellers as a part of Tourism Australia's 'There's nothing like Australia' campaign and featured online at www.australia.com.

Moreover, the app follows new research findings released by Tourism Australia, demonstrating the growing impact of social media on the way Australians travel around their own country. A survey of more than 1,000 Facebook users nationwide revealed that up to 73 per cent admit to proactively checking the social media networks of their friends whilst they are on holiday, including visiting their friends' Facebook pages, checking news feeds, photos, reading status updates or directly conversing about the trip on Facebook. Twenty per cent of those surveyed also admitted that they have been prompted to book a domestic holiday as a result of viewing these Facebook updates, often inspired by photos and check-ins.

Nick Baker, executive general manager, consumer marketing, Tourism Australia, who has led the national tourism agency's innovative digital and social media approach says, "We know from research that more and more travellers are turning to their social media networks for inspiration to help them plan and get the best out of their holidays. Tourism Australia's new Facebook app recognises this insight and provides a simple to use tool involving your closest and most trusted friends to help connect with and share great ideas to plan and make the most of your trip."

"The new Discover Australia Through Your Friends app is also a great tool for the industry – allowing us to simultaneously showcase these postings as fantastic examples of things for visitors to do nearby, whilst spending time exploring our great country," adds Baker.