King Island Holiday Voucher Industry FAQs

What is the King Island Holiday Voucher program?

Tourism Tasmania are coordinating a marketing campaign of $100,000 is aimed at stimulating travel to King Island and offering 700 holiday vouchers valued at $300 each to residents of Victoria or Tasmania aged 18 years or over.

Ballot entries are capped at one per person. Recipients of a holiday voucher will be able to spend their voucher on accommodation, activities, experiences or tours booked via the King Island Tourism website, www.kingisland.org.au.

Ballot registrations will open on Thursday 7 April and close on Sunday 10 April, with successful registrations selected at random. The full value of the voucher must be spent in one transaction during the booking period of 11 April to 20 April for travel between 1 May and 31 July.

 

Why is the Tasmanian Government running this voucher program?

The King Island Holiday Voucher program is designed to support the King Island tourism industry over winter as part of COVID 19 recovery support.

The King Island Holiday Voucher program is designed to encourage visitors to book a King Island holiday with a $300 voucher available towards accommodation and experience bookings. Holiday visitors have a high propensity to consume food and beverages during their stay enabling hospitality venues to benefit from the scheme.

 

Why are we using a different approach to the previous Tasmanian voucher scheme?

Visitors have less knowledge of King Island’s accommodation, tourism attractions and tours, and our product offering is small. This program allows the local businesses to benefit from the vouchers directly.

To help consumers book, King Island Tourism hosts an online booking portal on their website www.kingisland.org.au which allows them to search available accommodation, attractions, experiences and tours and book directly via the booking portal using their Holiday Voucher.

King Island Tourism has engaged a third-party software provider, Bookeasy, to provide the booking portal and to work directly with participating tourism businesses to setup their listing.

The website booking portal will provide a streamlined process that enables participating tourism businesses to manage bookings and display availability directly to consumers.

Participating tourism businesses are expected to have reasonable and consistent availability across the travel period to facilitate consumer bookings.

 

How do Tourism Businesses apply to be part of this program?

Applications for business participation opened on 17 March 2022 and close at 11:59pm (AEST) on 6^th April 2022.

Businesses who have availability during the travel period and wish to participate need to complete an operator agreement. These can be requested via email to tourism@kingisland.org.au.

All participating Tourism Businesses will need to meet the program’s eligibility criteria, agree to the Terms and Conditions and be approved to participate in the program.

Do operators need to pay commission or fees?

There is no cost to register for this opportunity or to add your business to the KITI website.

A 10% commission is charged on any bookings made via the kingisland.org.au website. This commission covers booking system maintenance costs charged by Bookeasy, and an amount to cover KITI’s operating costs in managing the website and bookings locally. Businesses are welcome to increase their listed price to account for this additional cost if they wish.

While vouchers are only redeemable on the KITI website, non-voucher bookings may be attracted through the marketing coordinated by Tourism Tasmania. There is no restriction on other booking sites, telephone numbers or other contact details being included in the business listing on the KITI website.

What tourism products are eligible?

The following examples are eligible:

• Accommodation: Including apartments, bed and breakfasts, cabins, cottages, farm stays, holiday houses, motels, hotels, resorts, retreats and lodges.
• Tours: Tour operators that offer regularly organised tours with a leisure-tourism focus, organised by experienced guides which may include a personal host and/or commentary. For example, a guided walk, bus tour, air tour, agritourism, food and wine tour, outdoor and adventure tour or cooking class.
• Attractions: Places/areas of interest that offer a distinct visitor experience to the leisure tourist and that have a fee for entry.
• Events: One-off or limited-run events which are suitable for visitors to the Island, such as shows, gigs, or ticketed sporting events.
• Eateries: offering fixed-price options such as lunch/dinner packages, special menus or hampers
• Car Hire

If you are unsure if your business is eligible, please contact tourism@kingisland.org.au.

Will my booking or reservations system integrate?

If your business uses a channel manager/booking engine such as siteminder, littlehotelier or preno, this system will integrate with the Bookeasy booking portal.

The booking portal will not facilitate a connection with other individual reservation systems, e.g. AirBnB.

Tourism businesses can manually manage their own inventory and availability on the booking portal and can opt for automatic confirmation of reservations, or “Request to Book” reservations, where a customer submits a request via the booking portal and the operator can accept or decline that request once they have reviewed the details. KITI will work directly with businesses to ensure the booking processes and mechanics are clear prior to consumer launch.

 

How does the voucher booking process work?

Once notified they have been successful in receiving a Holiday Voucher, consumers will be directed to the King Island website booking portal hosted by King Island Tourism.

Consumers will be able to search all available product listings within the booking portal or can filter listings by accommodation or experiences.

Consumers will select a product listing or listings and use their Holiday Voucher code as a payment type at the checkout stage, using a credit or debit card to cover the rest of the booking costs, if required.

Consumers will be required to use the entire voucher through one cart transaction. This may include multiple products or services from one or multiple operators.

 

How will I receive my payment for services/products provided?

The operator is eligible for payment when the consumer completes the tour, experience or accommodation stay with the operator. Operator payments are processed fortnightly on the 15^th and 30^th of each month for bookings completed in the prior 2 weeks. To ensure you are paid promptly, check that your banking details have been put into your Bookeasy profile.

 

What happens if Tasmania or Victoria go into lockdown or there are border restrictions?

King Island Tourism constantly monitors travel and border restrictions and any changes will be carefully reviewed to assess impact on the King Island Holiday Voucher program.

In these instances, King Island Tourism will ultimately be guided by Public Health advice and will issue updated information and advice regarding any necessary changes to the campaign to participating Tourism Businesses via email.

The cancellation process and refund process for consumers will operate in accordance with each participating business’ policies. Please ensure you have put your cancellation policy in your Bookeasy profile.

 

How many product listings can I promote?

Participating businesses can provide up to 5 product/service listings on the booking portal. This could be five different room types or five different types of tours or attractions.

If your Tourism Business has multiple sites, you can enter an application for each site and submit five product listings.

 

Can I offer a further discount in my listing?

Participating businesses are not required to provide a discount or amend standard pricing to participate.

It is important to consider the best available offer for the consumer. Once pricing is loaded into the booking portal, it cannot be altered or amended across the period 4^th April 2022 to 20^th April 2022.

Tourism Businesses should make their refund and cancellation policies clear and provide these in their Bookeasy profile. The business’ refund and cancellation policies will be visible to the consumer during the booking process.

 

My tour/attraction/service/product is under $100, can I be involved?

Yes, however you may want to consider creating an offer that covers 2, 4 or 6 people rather than an individual, this increases the likelihood of a group or family booking.  You may also want to include other value adds, or a combination of both.

Example 1: a $30 per person tour may be offered for four people (bringing the value to $120).

 

When are the travel periods for the Holiday Vouchers?

The Holiday Voucher travel period is 1 May to 31 July 2022.

 

Can the Holiday Vouchers be transferred to other travellers?

No, the Holiday Vouchers are non-transferable.

 

Can the Holiday Vouchers be used by the consumer on any day of the week?

Yes, the Holiday Vouchers are available on any day of the week, including weekends, subject to availability and during the stipulated travel period.

 

Can the product listing be a gift voucher?

No, the Holiday Vouchers cannot be used to offer gift vouchers.

 

What happens after I submit my operator agreement?

If approved, you will be contacted by King Island Tourism with next steps to complete your registration.

You have until 6^th April 2022 to upload the information required through the registration process including available inventory.

 

Do I need to be a member of King Island Tourism to be part of this program?

No, you do not need to be a member of King Island Tourism Inc to list products/services/accommodation participating in the voucher program. However, if you would like your listing to be available for booking beyond the voucher program, i.e. past 31^st July 2022, you will be required to be a member of. Membership information can be obtained from the Visitor Information Centre at 5 George St, Currie.

 

Where can customers get help or information on vouchers?

Customers can get access to information on the voucher program and FAQs on the King Island Tourism website www.kingisland.org.au. They are also able to call the King Island Tourism Visitor Information Line on 1800 645 014 between 9am and 5:30pm, Monday to Friday or 10am-1pm on Saturday for the full period of the voucher program, from 1^st April 2022 to 31^st July 2022.

 

Can I get help to setup my listing on the website?

After submitting your operator agreement, you can book a one-on-one session with a Bookeasy trainer by this link: https://book.tourmanager.com.au/bookeasy-11-consultations/tours/139476.

The training will be done via video conferencing – if you are unable to do this at home, you are welcome to book the KIRDO meeting room to use the internet at KIRDO.

Individual assistance is also available with Lee or Evelyn at KIRDO.