ACM is set to launch a new national travel website on March 7, which is designed to help Australians navigate the post-pandemic holiday market.
The launch will be backed by a national print and digital advertising campaign, designed to promote regional travel to ACM’s 6.9 million monthly readers.
ACM launched Explore in print in early 2020 as a weekly insert for its 14 daily newspapers with the help of the ACM travel editor, Peter Lynch who is the former editor of Nine Entertainment Group’s travel publishing assets including the Traveller weekend inserts in The Age & SMH.
Lynch said: “Explore in print has been a big hit with readers and advertisers alike and we’ve seen solid growth in both, which is a testament to the power of the ACM network even with a pandemic hovering over us. Launching a dedicate website is the natural next step as we look to create a destination site for Aussie travellers.”
The move will give the Explore brand a potential reach of over 4.6 million readers across 150 titles.
Designed with an emphasis on holidays at home while COVID-19 continues to make trips overseas difficult, Lynch continued “Domestic planes are back in the air, and there are some fabulous bargains and great experiences to be had while our tourist spots are available exclusively to us. So now is a great time to make navigating Australian travel easy, safe and fun,”
“The pandemic means people are viewing travel in a very different way. They are desperate to take trips and see new things – working from home has made them even more keen to see Australia. But they want practical help to de-risk travel bookings and prepare for when they can again go overseas.”
“We know many of the areas in which ACM operate have been doing it tough with a combination of drought, floods, bushfires and then COVID-19, so we’ve focussed on regional Australian destinations with the hopes to help re-generate these areas and bring people back.”
ACM’s Managing Director, Tony Kendall said: “We couldn’t be happier to be launching this new website to do our bit to help get the travel industry back on its feet. “
“For our travel clients, the ability to now combine Explore in print with our new exploretravel.com.au website presents a great opportunity to reach over 4 million potential travellers. We have highly trusted brands and a commitment to helping our clients reach our travel audiences across a variety of media channel options.”
“Over 3.4 million of our readers don’t read the other national inserts and 3.3 million are intending to take a holiday in the next 12 months with an average expenditure of over $10,000+.