Tourism Australia has come up with a new tagline and campaign - “There’s Nothing Like Australia” which aims to showcase all the things that make Australia unlike anywhere else.

"There's Nothing like" Australia Tourism tagline

And this time they made sure there would be no Lara Bingle raising bloody hell. Actually, in addition to staying away from controversy, the two-phase campaign has been smartly designed to capitalize on user generated content and social networking.

Starting today, Australians are being invited to start taking photos of their favourite place or experience in Australia and come up with a description in 20 words or less on what makes it uniquely Australian.

A sample for Queensland is shown in the picture to the left, with the suggestive tagline – “There’s Nothing Like… Queensland.”

Andrew McEvoy, Managing Director, Tourism Australia, explains that “Australians are the experts on what is unique and special about their country and we want to share this with potential travellers in a way that will make them want to come and visit our country.”

So for Phase I, Tourism Australia is spending $4 million to create an interactive map of Australia, made up of all the things Australians think are special about their country.

From 15 April to May 12, Australians will have the chance to upload their entries to the campaign website www.nothinglikeaustralia.com. 

The data will then be used to create the interactive map, which will be searchable by experience type, location, and by 1,000 keywords. The map will be available on both australia.com and nothinglikeaustralia.com.

The Phase II global launch will be in May 2010, with the campaign website and map being made public, accompanied by a television commercial.

Some of the submitted entries will be used in print and online advertising globally. Tourism Australia will also create videos of suggested locations, to be used in ads on TV and in online video ads. They plan to spend $150 million on the campaign over the next three years.

While there is no winner in the 7 days of strikes faced by British Airways and its customers, you can still count who lost how much, and we can find out who was the biggest loser.

BA Strike

In terms of hard cold cash, British Airways says it lost 7 million pounds a day during the 3-day March 20-22 strike, and another 5.5 million pounds per day during the 4-day March 27-30 strike.

Add that up, and it comes to 43 million pounds. But there’s more. BA tried hard to lessen the percieved impact by keeping a majority of their planes in the air, at a heavy cost. 

They flew ghost flights with no crew or passengers, which boosted the number of planes up in the air. BA further chartered planes and crew from competitors – 25 during the first strike and 11 during the second one. 

The airline has also been accused of running the world’s most expensive airline in the world during the strike, by asking pilots with £120,000 salaries to do the work of the cabin crew who get paid £15,000 a year.

Add all this up, and according to a Citi broker, the total strike impact is to the tune of 72 million pounds – consisting of 82 million pounds in lost revenue and 12 million pounds in additional costs, offset by 22 million pounds in operating cost reductions.

Match this 72 million pound tab for BA against Unite’s tab – £30 per day per worker, with 11,500 cabin crew on strike. Works out to around 350,000 pounds in lost wages per day, or 2.45 million pounds for the 7 days of strikes. Even this is going to be softened by a £700,000 hardship fund which Unite is collecting to help keep the strike going.

The striking workers will be back at work tomorrow, and BA has not punished them in any meaningful way. But for BA, the pain continues. Passengers leery of Unite’s threat for another April 14 strike are likely to steer clear of BA all the way from now until April 14 and afterwards – if the dispute isn’t resolved.

All said and done, Unite came out of the strike with no significant damage, and retained their ability and determination to strike again.

There’s a lot more at stake for BA now, including losing market share to other airlines who are making use of the strike in their ads to lure BA customers.

In terms of hard cash, BA lost heavily – more than the £60 million a year they were trying to save, which was the cause of the strike. In terms of their position before and after the strike, BA now looks to be in a bigger hole, so the loser in this 7-day fight is unquestionably British Airways.

Photo by itf

The Obama Administration’s decision to scrap NASA’s Constellation program to replace the space shuttles has effectively transferred Florida’s space tourism into the hands of three museums. Outside Florida.

Space Shuttle

The Atlantis, Endeavour and Discovery shuttles are to be retired next year, and each shuttle will be delivered to a separate museum in 2011.

Officials estimate that each shuttle will bring in $100 million a year in revenues for its new home.

The museums have not been chosen yet, but 25 museums are in the running, including New York’s Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum and Washington’s Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

With such a huge amount at stake, each city is pulling out all the stops to lobby NASA. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) met NASA Administrator Charles Bolden to discuss New York’s claim for one of the shuttles.

New York’s other Senator Kirsten Gillibrand also had a chat with Bolden and she and her staff have been buttering up Vice President Joe Biden – the Chairman of NASA’s Board. Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Christine Quinn are also lobbying NASA.

As for Florida, they’re still in denial. Various state and community officials and organizations are gearing up to tackle President Obama when he comes in for the Shuttle Summit on April 15.

The President is expected to discuss NASA’s future and outline his vision for creating new jobs to replace the ones that are going to be lost. Easier said than done. Here’s what at stake for Florida if they pull the plug on NASA’s moon program:-

NASA’s total economic impact in Florida – $4.1 billion in output, $2.1 billion in household income, $103 million in state and local tax revenues, and 40,802 jobs.

3,500 direct jobs at NASA and 9,870 jobs in the community will be lost from the shuttle retirements.

Kennedy Space Center – 1.6 million annual visitors, 85% from out of state, who spend $78 million at KSC.

Brevard County (Space Coast) Tourism – 3% drop in annual visitors who come specifically for shuttle launches, plus a drop in aerospace business travel.

NASA, of course, isn’t going to be sitting around twiddling their thumbs. They would still have a budget of $100 billion over the next 5 years. But that would be more in the form of research and providing support to commercial companies – No publicity or shuttle launches, and nothing new for tourists to gawk at.

End game here is that Florida’s space tourism is about to be dispersed to the winds – whereever the retired space shuttles will choose to land.

Southwest is catching some flak for touting that they don’t charge for bags while everyone else does. Specifically, its a Texas style battle between Southwest and Airtran.

Southwest has been pushing the ‘Grab Your Bag: It’s On’ ad on television, in which a bunch of Southwest baggage handlers line up on the runway and raise their shirts to show their ‘Battle Cry.’

Southwest Airlines 'It's On' ad

Passengers on another airline’s plane on the runway are shown the message. The ad has more of an impact because it starts with the handlers showing the message to passengers on a competing airline, but ends with a Southwest plane in the background and the words ‘Bags Fly Free’ in the foreground.

So far so good for Southwest, and surely their intent wasn’t to target a specific competitor. But apparently the plane was an Airtran plane, and Airtran felt obliged to respond.

Instead of putting out a response ad or filing a complaint, Airtran created a response video, ostensibly just for the sake of satisfying employees who demanded a response to Southwest. The video was posted on Airtran’s employee website and then they alerted the media about it.

The Airtran video is titled ‘Skip the Stampede’ and pokes fun at Southwest’s open seating policy. The ad begins in the Southwest boarding area with passengers looking like cows milling around and being herded into a plane by a Southwest employee with a Texas drawl.

Airtran 'Skip the Stampede' video

The cows race for the seats while an Airtran passenger on a nearby plane enjoys comfortable seating and watches the Southwest cattle ranch scene unfold outside. The ad ends with the message ‘Skip the Stampede.’ The Airtran video posted on their employee website was accompanied by this message:-

“We’ve heard from many Crew Members from around the country about a funny ad currently running on network TV. We’ve been asked again and again how we planned to respond. Well, we thought about it and thought about it and decided to not respond at all. After all, focusing on running the best low-cost carrier in America is enough to keep us busy.  “BUT…if we were to respond, it might look something like this:”

[Video here]

“Thanks to all of our volunteer Crew Members for donning these costumes and playing along. Your dedication to AirTran and your performance was truly MMMOOOOOOOving.”

Smart move by Airtran. Had they put out an official response, it wouldn’t have had the same impact. By keeping it internal and leaking it to the media, Airtran’s cows have managed to stampede on Southwest’s free bags message without having to take responsibility for it.

Will Southwest respond? Not likely, but if they do, it would surely mean more free publicity for Airtran. And probably a response video involving sheep.

Watch the Southwest ad here and the Airtran response video here.