www.wherethebalihellareyou.com a huge success

Little Bali Hotel & Resort Company (LBHRC) co-founder Brett Morgan has says that he is “absolutely gob smacked” by an overwhelming industry reaction to the release of the  company’s tongue in cheek www.wherethebalihellareyou.com online marketing campaign.

Since launching the concept last week, Morgan said the LBHRC website had already received close on 20,000 unique visitors and he had been inundated by requests from agency groups, wholesalers and airlines requesting access to LBHRC’s campaign footage for promotional purposes, adding, “It’s obvious everyone was waiting for someone to do something,” he said.

He said he had also been contacted from travel specialists located in India, Japan and the US and particularly in the UK where, according to Morgan, the video clip is fast achieving ‘cult’ status, with apparently the Brits face similar problems marketing the destination.

“I’ve heard from several product managers and company owners who have told me they too are massively frustrated about the lack of support for the area in the UK market which shifts tens of thousands of Brits to Bali every year.”

The campaign has also received strong response from Bali with hotel membership numbers, currently eight, expected to rise following direct contact from several small hoteliers and two locally-based event organisers.

“It’s been amazing – we’ve also been approached by The Lonely Planet Group in Melbourne which has applauded our effort and offered to support us via the provision of a number of its ‘Best of Bali’ guide books to give away as promotional prizes.”

“We’ve also heard from a small Pacific-based destination which has asked us if we can help it do something similar as well as several non-travel oriented companies, including a baggage handling company which has asked if we can apply the concept to its products.”

Brett said that while he expected some form of knee-jerk reaction, he didn’t quite expect this, adding, “But at the end of the day it’s all about promoting Bali and doing anything we can to help the Balinese get back to where they deserve to be.

He added “We’re also hoping this campaign will play a role in helping Garuda Indonesia to change its current extreme stance regarding its plans to cut direct Denpasar services ex-east coast Australia which is obviously going to have a major effect on the destination.”

LBHRC has already begun planning version two of the viral marketing campaign which is expected to go online in late January 2007 and the ‘Where the Bali hell are you’ video clip can be viewed at www.wherethebalihellareyou.com.

In the meantime, Australian Federal Tourism Minister Fran Bailey said at Dreamtime on the Gold Coast that she admired the campaign, which was fun and cheeky, adding, “Tourism Australia is not precious about these things and I wish Bali the best in its tourism recovery from Australia, as there is great affection between Australians and the Balinese and we don’t begrudge this take off of our “Where The Bloody Hell Are You” campaign at all”.

Report by The Mole