"Walking on a Dream" will be the catchphrase for selling tourism in WA for at least the next five years after the state launched a new $15 million global campaign.
The 2008 hit song Walking on a Dream by WA's Empire of the Sun has been reimagined for the campaign, which will run interstate and in 11 different countries.
West Australian-born Luke Steele, who is one half of the electro-pop duo, recorded a stripped-back cover of Walking on a Dream with his daughter Sonny and the Gondwana children's choir.
At the centre of selling WA's new "brand" are a series of video advertisements which will run on TV and online, showcasing dramatic landscapes up and down the state.
They also feature the dancing of two West Australian Aboriginal performers, Rika Hamaguchi and Ian Wilkes.
The advertisements, which will first air on the east coast from tomorrow before being launched overseas, include a one-minute video covering multiple locations.
There are also four 30-second clips focusing on individual WA locations — the Kimberley, Ningaloo Reef, the Margaret River region and Perth.
The adverts will also run widely on outdoor billboards, online and on social media.
A WA crew shot the videos on location and the creative direction came from The Brand Agency, based in Perth.
The international markets that will be targeted include the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, USA, India, Hong Kong, Japan, and China.
The campaign was launched at a breakfast for hundreds of people under a giant blue whale skeleton inside Perth Museum Boola Bardip.
Tourism Minister Roger Cook told the crowd the campaign reflected Aboriginal culture being the "beating heart of WA's tourism strategy".
"Eighty per cent of international tourists come here wanting an Aboriginal cultural experience, less than 20 per cent leave having actually had that experience," he said.
"We're changing this, [with] the new tourism campaign guided through close consultation with WA's Aboriginal community leaders and the community at large."
Minister sets lofty goals
Mr Cook said tourism had never been more competitive and the Walking on a Dream campaign would keep WA in the fight.
"The past few years have been unlike anything the tourism sector and the world have ever experienced. International tourism stopped completely," he said.
"Every country, every state is trying to rebuild and refresh their tourism industry, everyone is competing for attention, it is the toughest and most competitive tourism market the world has ever seen.
"Western Australia offers tourism experiences that exist nowhere else in the world, but we can't expect people to find us by accident. We need to be bold, we need to be different, but above all we need to have a strong sense of identity."
While the government would not reveal any specific targets for visitor numbers or financial return it hoped the campaign would bring, Mr Cook did set a goal to double pre-COVID tourism business in WA by 2032.
"In the year before COVID, the total visitor spend contributed $13.5 billion dollars to our economy and provided 100,000 jobs," he said.
"We want to double that in the next decade."
The campaign will also run in WA, with the state hoping to hang on to some of the boosted intrastate travel that COVID and closed borders helped to foster.
"We want the campaign to be adopted with pride by locals, because it is a story about us, it's about the extraordinary place we are privileged to call home," Mr Cook said.
Tourism WA managing director Carolyn Turnbull said the campaign had been catered to the post-COVID era.
"Visitors are really seeking the wide-open spaces, and extremely beautiful experiential journeys that Western Australia offers so beautifully," she said.
"I do believe that Walking on a Dream is going to elevate Western Australia to the world in a highly cluttered and competitive marketplace that the world is facing right now.
"We want to be a bucket-list destination, we want to be seen as an awe-inspiring place to visit."
Steele gets 'keys to the city'
As is standard practice, the government declined to reveal how much Luke Steele had been paid for his music.
While the singer joked that "a couple of jet skis and the keys to the city" had got him over the line, he said it was an "honour" to promote his home state.
"This is where we wrote the song, this where I met my wife, where my kids were born, I mean what a great honour for this song to represent this great state," he said.
"Re-recording a song that's sold millions of records and had an impact on people around the world took a few revisions.
"The main thing we wanted to remember was not losing what is so great about this song in the first place, which is its simplicity, beauty, and power … the original has nothing in it, there's a keyboard, a guitar."
Premier Mark McGowan said the campaign had tried to differentiate WA from interstate competitors and he was confident the videos promoted a uniquely WA holiday.
"Well, it has Western Australia written on it, that's a pretty good sign that it's about Western Australia and the images are all Western Australia, and it'll direct people to our website, there's not much more you can do than that," he said.
"We are very focused on making sure that we differentiate ourselves from the experiences on the eastern states.
"These sorts of things build, and so running this campaign interstate and around the world builds awareness of Western Australia.
"And then you convert by sending people to your website, by tourism operators and travel agents promoting Western Australia, those sorts of things convert these campaigns into actual people coming here."
The Australian Hotels Association's Bradley Woods agreed the later, more specific stages of the campaign that were set to follow would be important.
"These ads form the basis of the brand, they're not the campaign to actually get people to book. That will come," he said.
"The next iteration of this campaign will be the 'travel now', 'book here', 'this is how you do it', 'here's the special', and that's the tactical campaign that will roll out.
"But the initial stage is the new branding, but the music that comes with that, the fantastic dreamlike essence that this campaign will deliver."
WA's image has a long way to go
Mr Woods said while there was no doubt WA's image elsewhere had a long way to go in recovering from the impacts of COVID-19 and closed borders, progress was being made.
"The closed borders did have an impact on the state, there's no doubt about that," he said.
"As we know regional Western Australian tourism businesses did really well with people staying within the state.
"Metropolitan Perth, hospitality, and accommodation businesses were in a very difficult period but they're starting to recover now. We're seeing more conventions and events coming to the state."
