Australia's Gold Coast drives 100%+ higher tourist engagement with Sitecore

The Gold Coast’s largest economic driver is its tourism industry which attracts 11 million tourists a year, generating AU$7 billion. However, competing national and international tourist locations were reducing the family destination’s market share. EGC needed to increase demand, arrivals, and expenditures for the region’s accommodation and entertainment venues, theme parks, tour operators, restaurants, and professional support services. Aiming to double the economic impact for the region in the next 10 years, EGC’s strategy focuses on appealing to a wider range of audiences and converting interest into bookings and revenue for local businesses. EGC wanted to offer a visitor-focused digital experience and empower EGC marketers to maximize the value of dynamic content, segmentation, and personalization.

EGC worked with Sitecore solution partner PING Works to develop a modern, flexible, future-proof digital experience platform to enable EGC to expand its reach and appeal to new audiences. EGC’s new environment seamlessly integrates Sitecore’s composable solutions with third-party data warehouses, applications, aggregators, and services, on the Sitecore Experience Platform. With Sitecore CDP and Sitecore Personalize, EGC is analyzing customer data to define and deliver personalized content and offers that appeal to broader visitor segments, such as couples and friend and business groups that can take advantage of mid-week opportunities.

Using the composable Sitecore Content Hub DAM, EGC has made it easy for its non-technical marketing and sales professionals to develop, manage, and publish digital content. With Sitecore, faster access to digital assets has driven a 174% increase in goal completions. EGC can receive a wide array of asset types and formats from hundreds of diverse sources, standardize them for consistency and quality, and push them out to thousands of EGC members, press, government, and tourism entities.

EGC’s new website is helping broaden audiences and increase tourism to the city. With the composable Sitecore platform, EGC is transforming the organization’s visitor engagement, driving up visitor numbers, and increasing the city’s economic performance. Website traffic is up by 48.5% and visitors are spending 17% more time per session, helping businesses in the local community attract more customers and revenue. Local businesses have seen revenue-generating opportunities increase 164% year-on-year, with an 119% increase in visitors booking accommodations, attending leisure and business events, and enjoying local restaurants and bars. Significantly, a 52.5% increase in new site visits indicates that EGC is reaching audiences that are new to the Gold Coast—and raising the destination’s global profile in the run-up to the 2032 Summer Olympics.