Storytelling Community Tourism

Dr. Aise Kim (Secretary WTA)

Australia-Indonesia Tourism Forum 

Tuesday, 6 June 2023

Bradley Forum (Level 5), Hawke Building, UniSA 

(City West Campus, 55 North Terrace, Adelaide)

The storytelling tour marketing events were organised to offer an informative, engaging, and valuable discussion forum and networking opportunity to the tourism industry professionals for storytelling tour development. 

As part of post-COVID-19 recovery strategies, we explore the best design of unique local storytelling tours for inspiring tourists in multiple ways, ranging from re-creating tour guides’ personal stories to showcasing virtual reality tours or awarded night vision-based tours.

The program covers key topics such as storytelling marketing strategies, storytelling tour designs in Australia and Indonesia, and virtual tour design. As one of the highlights, Steve Davis, Creative Director, ‘Talked about Marketing’ presents the storytelling marketing strategies. The virtual reality tours of Coorong and Mt Crawford Forest areas are showcased at this event. It is expected to gain cross-cultural awareness of the unique cultural tourism attractions, local food, wildlife, and forest environment (including forest wellness experience) in the unexploited areas of Australia and Indonesia. 

This event presents the top 10 keynote speakers from marketing experts, tourism academics, local/international tourism companies, and virtual tour development companies (the framework virtual reality specialist).

The interactive discussions and informative conversations are also organised for the industry experts to share their best business practices of storytelling tours or virtual reality tour design. 

It is hoped that this event offers a great starting point for the business sector to gain cutting-edge knowledge about storytelling marketing practices and innovative virtual tour designs for storytelling-based tourism development which the industry can adapt to their own business in the future. 

Event program:

Inspiring tourists through storytelling marketing 
Presentation 1 – Storytelling tourism marketing for forest and food tourism development Dr. Aise Kim, UniSA Presentation 2 – Storytelling marketing strategies Steve Davis, Creative Director, ‘Talked about marketing’ 
Presentation 3 (Online) – Storytelling tour design Professor Noel Scott, University of the Sunshine Coast
Australia – Best practices of storytelling tour design & tour guiding 
Presentation 4 – Storytelling tour guiding experience – Coorong Tracy Hill, Coorong Wildside Tours
Presentation 5 – Storytelling tour guiding experience – Forest wellbeing tourism Lisa Murphy, Big Heart Adventures 
Presentation 6 – Virtual tour design – South Australia Daniel Howlett, Framework VR Jacob Gates
Presentation 7 (Online) – Storytelling tour design – Jellurgal, Queensland Dr. Ronda Green, Wildlife Tourism Australia 
Presentation 8 (Online) – Virtual tour – Australia Wendy Bithell, Vision Walks – Eco Tours
Indonesia – Best practices of storytelling tour design
Presentation 5 (Online)  – Storytelling tour showcase– Brajaharjosari Village, Sumatra Island, Indonesia
Gede Ori, Ecolodges Indonesia
Presentation 6 -Storytelling tour design – Lombok, Indonesia
Dr Janti Gunawan, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS)
Presentation 7 (Online)  – Storytelling tour showcase– Java, Indonesia  
Dr Agnes Tuti, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS)
Resources
Storytelling Videos via Youtube – Coorong & Mt Crawford South Australia; Jellurgal Aboriginal Cultural Centre, QLD; Lombok, Java, East Sumatra, Indonesia.
Virtual Tours by UniSA and FrameworkVRMt.Crawford SA Virtual Tour and Coorong SA Virtual Tour
Educational materials for Storytelling MarketingStorytelling Tours for Indonesia; Stories from Lombok, Indonesia
For further information (Presentation powerpoints and photos) via UniSA e-Portfolio, please visit here.

Acknowledgment

This storytelling marketing forum is funded by the Australia-Indonesia Institute of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade with support from the School of Business, University of South Australia. 

The ‘Australia-Indonesia Institute (AII) was established by the Australian Government in 1989 to contribute to a more broadly based and enduring relationship between Australia and Indonesia and to project positive images of Australia and Indonesia in each other’s countries.

I would like to acknowledge my sincere thanks to all key speakers and project teams for their great contribution to this event and virtual tour development. 

Steve Davis, Creative Director, Talked about marketing
Tracy Hill, Tour Guide, Coorong Wildside Tours
Lisa Murphy, Tour Guide, Big Heart Adventures
Wendy Bithell, Tour Guide, Vision Walks – Eco Tours
Daniel Howlett, Director, Framework Virtual Reality
Jacob Gates, Framework Virtual Reality
Mik Batki, Coorong Cabins
Mark Koolmatrie, Kool Tours
Luke Hein, Forestry SA 
Gede Ori, Ecolodges Indonesia
Steve Noakes, Director, Ecolodges Indonesia 
Dr. Agnes Tuti, Institute of Technology Sepuluh Nopember, Indonesia 
Dr. Janti Gunawan, Institute of Technology Sepuluh Nopember, Indonesia 
Professor Noel Scott, University of the Sunshine Coast 
Dr. Ronda Green, Chair of Wildlife Tourism Australia 

I also take this opportunity to express a special gratitude to all industry contacts for their recommendation of key experts and for promoting this event to their members. Special thanks are given to: 

  • Forestry SA (Andrew Dundon, Kieran Gosden, Laura Thomas, Rachel Godoy, Luke Hein)
  • Murray River, Lakes, and Coorong Tourism (Bill Nehmy)
  • Coorong Council (Emily Brown, Kellie Jaensch)
  • Tourism Industry Council South Australia (Shaun de Bruyn, Linda Lacey)
  • South Australian Tourism Commission (April Dowdell)
  • Adelaide Economic Development Agency (Sondra Stewart, Tourism Partnership Advisor)

Event Organisers:

I appreciate the great support of Professor Allan O’Connor and the professional staff (Paulina, Liam, and Nancy) from the Centre for Enterprise Dynamics in Global Economies (C-EDGE), School of Business, University of South Australia for organizing this event. I want to thank student volunteers for their support for this event.

Lastly, I would like to express my special gratitude to Australia-Indonesia Institute for virtual tour video development and industry engagement opportunities.

2022 Public Forum:  Wildlife Travels between Indonesia and Australia

  • Sunday afternoon 30th October 2022, Southbank, Brisbane. QCA Lecture Theatre and Gallery, Griffith University (Building S05, Southbank)
    • Public presentations and displays, 1.00 – 4.30 pm, open to delegates and the general public. Free Entry. It can also be accessed by conference delegates via Teams.
    • 1.00 – 2.30 pm Wildlife travels between Australia and Indonesia (two countries so close to each other, both with high biodiversity but so very different). Showcasing the cultural and natural attractions, including of course, the wildlife, and presentation of a project for the resilience of community tourism in both countries funded by the Australia-Indonesia Institute. Led by WTA secretary Dr. Aise Kim. Sample Indonesian food from the Ma Pa Me Restaurant. 

Australia-Indonesia Institute Project 

 The project background:

This project is to develop a virtual reality tour for the local community in rural/remote areas as part of post-COVID-19 recovery. As a result, the local communities get the ultimate benefits from this project for promoting Australia’s native food identity, forests, wildlife, or local food tours through virtual educational tour development.

This project will provide the online showcase/workshop event to the local communities/students/tourism business communities in both Australia and Indonesia. Virtual storytelling tours will introduce one of the forest/national parks with an emphasis on Aboriginal food/local food, local culture, wildlife, forest conservation issues, and tour options.

 This virtual storytelling tour will NOT be used for commercial purposes at all. This is a government-funded research project which helps the local community’s training purpose as part of post-COVID-19 recovery. It will be ONLY used for educating/training/showcasing local communities/students/tour operators to teach how to design, develop, and work on the storytelling tour as well as educating *about the Australian forest environment to communities in Indonesia. 

Note: *One of the primary purposes of this project is to help out Indonesian communities to develop sustainable tourism products, especially in the remote forest areas as some challenging issues have arisen as part of the negative impacts of COVID-19.

This project will improve economic capacity building and social well-being in Australia and Indonesia as a critical aspect of Covid-19 recovery while reducing negative environmental challenges such as illegal logging or selling wildlife animals in remote areas of Indonesia.

Indonesian communities can learn from the best sustainable practices of forest tourism experience in Australia which highlight the diverse aspects of the forest environment including native food, wildlife, forest habits, local culture, conservation issues, etc.

As a result, the Indonesian communities can also develop new forest tourism products for sustainable tourism outcomes, while addressing the importance of forest conservation issues.

Online training, virtual tours, and events will be delivered to provide a pathway for local community leaders to network, discuss challenging issues and explore new economic opportunities, using the showcase storytelling tour video examples.

The project will increase social and economic resilience within disadvantaged communities in both countries, with a focus on stimulating bilateral cultural and economic relationships and fostering best business practices of sustainable tourism and food diversity between Australia and Indonesia.

The benefits of the project:

  1. It helps develop the local community’s promotional tour video (with a focus on a storytelling approach) for both general tours and educational programs.
  2. This new storytelling tour video can be used as an additional promotional video to current tourist markets for the involved tour operators.
  3. It enables tour operators to create their own virtual tour which could be offered via online Zoom, as tour operators have their storytelling guiding experience so the platform can be extended to alternative ways of online storytelling tours.