Tourism Queensland have locked in on UK holidaymakers as their global target, producing a number of marketing efforts including trade campaigns, partnerships with New South Wales , and online games aimed at young adults.

The $1 million three-part marketing drive currently in progress aims to build on the 240,000 Britons who visited Queensland in the last financial year.

The new marketing rollout may get more attention because of the success of 2009’s ‘Best Job in the World’ promotion, but Steve McRoberts from Tourism Queensland tells Marketingmag.com.au that it is different.

“The Best Job in the World campaign exceeded more than $410 million of media, in PR value,” McRoberts says. “The success of it has been to recognise what the Great Barrier Reef, Whitsundays and tropical Queensland has to offer, but this latest rollout is the total Queensland brand positioning, and it’s the first time we’ve marketed Queensland as a state globally.

The first part of the effort is a trade campaign called the ‘Q Factor’, and is currently running over the same period as the UK X Factor screens on television, until December 17 this year.

The Q Factor is a competition for British travel agents, with a grand prize of a free trip to Queensland. Promoted through B2B press ads and trade shows, the competition centres on a website where travel agents can test their knowledge of Queensland through weekly quizzes, and increase their chances of winning by setting up themed shopfronts and uploading video entries.

The second part of the campaign brings Queensland and New South Wales together in a ‘Best of Australia’ campaign, and offers holiday specials from Emirates through Flight Centre.

The final component aims to spread across online social networks, and target young adult ‘gap year’ travellers.

“A viral game has been created to encourage backpackers and gap-year travellers to create their own ‘big Queensland thing’ by learning more about Queensland from the game’s content,” Queensland minister for tourism Peter Lawlor said.

“Queensland is renowned as Australia’s land of big adventure and this innovative digital campaign encourages travellers to ‘grow’ their own big thing and link into Queensland places where they can have big adventures, such as the rainforest, reef and beaches,” Lawlor said.

The online execution so far has 254 Facebook ‘likes’ so far, 467 ‘big things’ created, and under seven thousand visitors.

The global marketing rollout continued last night in London where Peter Lawlor launched Tourism Queensland’s next UK campaign ‘Queensland, Where Australia Shines’.