Sunshine tourism icons feature in a new national podcast series – Drive your own adventure – which shines a spotlight on Queensland’s regional tourism hot spots along popular road trip routes.
The 30-episode series, presented by Ingenia Holidays and featuring Sea Life Mooloolaba and Maleny Dairies, broadcasts ‘behind the scenes’ insights from tourism operators and local tourism identities to a growing audience of eager listeners, with 22 percent of Australians now listening to podcasts, up from 18 percent last year.
Ingenia Holidays Chief Operating Officer Nikki Fisher said the series would add something unique to the current podcast landscape.
“The podcast airwaves are full of people recounting travel stories, but this series gets up close and personal with many of our region’s favourite tourism operators as well as some of the ‘hidden gems’ that are well-known locally, but lesser known to the broader market,” Ms Fisher said.
“With more and more people listening to podcasts, we’re finding that people are using them as a tool to help plan their holidays, and for people on the road a lot – like road trippers and caravaners – a podcast is the perfect way to do that holiday research en route.”
Ms Fisher said the choice to heavily feature Sunshine Coast tourism operators and personalities on the podcast was easy, given the uniqueness of the area and healthy tourism market – with domestic visitors to the region up a record 15 percent to 3.9 million visitors in the year ending March 2019, according to data from Tourism and Events Queensland.
“The podcast features veteran seal trainer of almost 30 years, Malcolm Westwood from Sea Life, who shares the quirks of training these super smart mammals,” Ms Fisher said.
“We also hear from Ross Hopper, owner of Maleny Dairies, who talks about what it takes to produce 200,000 litres of milk every week and what he loves about sharing the dairying process with farm visitors.”
The first instalment of the podcast series is now available at www.ingeniaholidays.com.au/podcast or via free download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud or Stitcher, with a second instalment of podcasts featuring New South Wales destinations to be released in the new year.
Full list of podcast episodes – by region
Cairns
- Cairns Aquarium
- Blazing Saddles Adventures
- Skyrail Rainforest Cableway
- Reef Restoration Foundation
- Tjapukai Cultural Park
- Tourism Tropical North Queensland
- Ingenia Holidays Cairns Coconut
Atherton Tablelands
- Mt Uncle Distillery
- Skybury Tropical Plantation
- David Hudson Indigenous Edutainer
Innisfail and surrounds
- Paronella Park
Outback
- Undara Experience
Fraser Coast
- Tasman Venture
- Hill of Promise Winery
- Fraser Explorer Tours
- Fraser Coast Tourism & Events
- Hervey Bay Dive Centre
- Bargara Brewing Company
- Ingenia Holidays Hervey Bay
Gympie
- Mary Valley Rattler
Sunshine Coast and hinterland
- Your Mates Brewing Company
- Sea Life Mooloolaba
- Maleny Dairies
- Maleny Botanic Gardens and Bird World
- Tourism Noosa
- Ingenia Holidays Rivershore
National
- Experience Co. Adventure Tourism
- Caravan Life – Ken and Lorraine Martin
- Caravan Life – Janice and Rex Drane