Tourism Tasmania is launching its adventure travel product to the UK
market in January 2007 with a major marketing and PR campaign in
conjunction with partners STA Travel and Qantas.

The adventure campaign is being endorsed by UK athletes Dee Caffari and
James Cracknell, who competed in the six-day Mark Webber Challenge from
5-11 November through Tasmania’s remote wilderness, alongside some of
Australia’s leading sports personalities.

For the first time a wide range of Tasmania’s top adventure experiences,
such as diving, kayaking, rafting, mountain biking and cycling trips,
will be available to book through leading UK tour operator STA Travel,
which has 50 branches throughout the UK.

 

Qantas has also partnered with Tourism Tasmania and STA Travel in the
production of an adventure travel supplement with contributions from
Caffari, Cracknell and F1 racing driver Webber, as well as some of the
UK’s top adventure writers. The supplement will be available to download
from STA Travel’s website, www.statravel.co.uk
  from 4th January 2007.

 

Sandra Leach, Tourism Tasmania’s regional manager for UK and Ireland
explains: “Although Tasmania is known throughout Australia as the
adventure island, until now it has fallen under the shadow of New
Zealand here in the UK, with the only available product in the UK
limited to multi-day walks such as the Bay of Fires. With such high
profile British athletes competing in the Mark Webber Challenge, we had
the perfect opportunity to put our fantastic adventure product into the
market place.”

 

John Constable, Managing Director, STA Travel UK Division adds,
“Australia is our top selling destination and it’s great to showcase the
breadth of our adventure product in Tasmania in partnership with Tourism
Tasmania, which will inspire our customers to visit this lesser explored
part of the continent.”

 

As well as thousands of miles of bushwalking tracks, the world’s most
mountainous island has endless adrenalin-pumping activities from
mountain biking down Mount Wellington to multi-day cycling throughout
the island’s 20 national parks; rock-climbing - Tasmania has the highest
cliffs in the Southern Hemisphere; abseiling - ranging from Cataract
Gorge in the heart of Launceston to the world’s highest commercial
abseil down the Gordon Dam (140m); caving and horse-riding.

 

With 5400km of coastline, Tasmania’s water based adventure includes the
best temperate water diving on earth (according to National Geographic),
with huge kelp forests, hundreds of wrecks and virtually prehistoric
marine life; multi-day kayaking trips, the world’s longest white water
rafting down the Franklin River, jet boating and surfing - including
Australia’s biggest waves at Shipstern Bluff on the Tasman Peninsula.

 

Tasmania’s wildlife is evident and abundant throughout the state with
much of it being indigenous and endemic, such as the Tasmanian devil,
which draws adventurers to the remote northwest corner to experience an
exciting ‘devil feed’ in the wild with devil expert Geoff King.

 

Like Tasmania’s wildlife, much of the flora is also rare, and equally
astounding, with Tasmania’s Swamp Gums growing up to almost 100 metres
in height, the tallest flowering tree in the world, and the Huon Pine,
dating back thousands of years, known to be the oldest living tree in
the world.
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