The drive to make Tasmania a year-round tourist destination has already attracted strong interest with more than 30,000 visits to Tourism Tasmania's promotional microsite since it opened last week.
Our Government is focused on growing Tasmania's tourism numbers to 1.5 million by 2020, which will create up to 8,000 new jobs. Ongoing promotions such as this by Tourism Tasmania are an important part of continuing visitor number growth.
While in the past, winter has traditionally been a quieter time for tourists, this promotion is aimed at boosting Tasmania's winter appeal and highlighting some of the major events being staged here this winter.
The latest visitor figures show that there was a 14 per cent increase in visitor numbers from 2012 but it is important that we continue to identify new ways to attract visitors to our State.
Visitor expenditure in Tasmania was $1.58 billion last year, which highlights the value of tourism in terms of job growth as well as our economy overall.
As part of Tourism Tasmania's "Tassie's Cheeky Half a Million Dollar Seat Giveaway" a giant game of musical chairs was held at one of Sydney's busiest tourist and commuter centres at Circular Quay on Friday in which 230 return seats to Hobart were given away.
This is just the start of the month-long promotion, however the major aspect of the promotion to give away 2 500 seats on Qantas flights this June, July and August is an online competition which has already attracted almost 2 600 entries and is open Australia-wide until May 4.
Other initiatives are also planned – including a promotion at the Hawthorn versus St Kilda game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on May 3.