Walhalla’s Star Hotel proprietor Michael Leaney, headed north to Brisbane in late may 2002 to attend the Australian Tourism Exchange (ATE). ATE is the biggest international inbound tourism exhibition to be held in Australia. The event attracts over 1,000 sellers and 800 international buyers, however for 2002, Walhalla’s Star Hotel was the sole representative from Gippsland.
Walhalla’s Star Hotel has invested considerable time, money and effort into developing an international visitor market to Gippsland, with Walhalla Historic Township becoming a major drawcard. Walhalla’s Star Hotel conducted a recent sales tour of Europe and hosted a travel agent familiarisation tour from the UK with very positive results.
At ATE in Brisbane, Tourism Victoria unveiled a new integrated display stand that set an exciting new direction for tourism promotion in the state (see photos below). 56 companies from Victoria attended ATE which was held from 25 May to 2 June, 2002.
While at ATE, the Hon. John Pandazopoulos, Victoria’s Minister for Tourism launched the Star Hotel's new international website. The site, www.walhalla-australia.info, has been created and developed by Walhalla’s Star Hotel for international consumers site to promote the hotel and Walhalla Historic Township. www.walhalla-australia.info has also been translated into German and French.
The concept of the website was to create an international site that gives all the information about the hotel, but directs the consumer towards a travel agent in their own country to make a booking. This tourism site, is one of the first in Victoria to be translated.
www.walhalla-australia.info (a mirror of www.starhotel.com.au) features photos, maps, information on activities, Quicktime movies and heritage information. It is planned for the website to be located on international web search engines. This site will take advantage of the high number of German websites that include the word “walhalla” and the sites in North America that promote towns such as Walhalla, South Carolina and Walhalla, North Dakota. The website is now online and will continuously be updated and have new features added.
