Rise Up for our River

A $4.6 million river tourism recovery plan is helping support Murray River operators impacted by the once-in-a-century flooding event. It includes the “Rise Up for Our River” marketing campaign and the River Revival Voucher program.

The campaign showcases iconic river locations, highlights tourism operators along the river and calls on South Australians to throw their support – and dollars – to impacted river communities. It launched state-wide across TV, print and outdoor, as well as digital and social media, with a TVC running from mid-March.

You can also find the River regions - their accommodation, tours and experiences - highlighted on our dedicated campaign page

Prior to the flooding event in late December 2022, tourism in the two regions was worth a combined $436 million and directly employing 2,800 people across both the Riverland and Murray River, Lakes & Coorong.


RIVER REVIVAL VOUCHERS

The River Revival Voucher program has so far pumped an estimated $10.7 million into South Australia’s Murray River regions, driving recovery for businesses and communities hit hard by the once-in-a-century flooding event last summer.

Vouchers can be used in the Riverland and Murray River, Lakes & Coorong regions, including:

  • $100 Experience vouchers
  • $100 Accommodation vouchers for a minimum one-night stay 
  • $200 Accommodation vouchers for a minimum two-night stay 
  • $750 Houseboats / guided tour vouchers (minimum $1500 spend inclusive of the $750 voucher) 

The vouchers have been timed and staggered to allow for tourism operators to be ready to welcome the boost in visitation by voucher holders. 

The first and second booking and travel periods have closed.

The ballot for the third River Revival Voucher round has now closed. 

  • Operator Expressions of Interest to participate: 29 January – 5pm, 4 February 2024 
  • Ballot registration: 19 – 20 February 2024 
  • Ballot draw and successful recipients notified: 21 February 2024 
  • Booking dates: Wednesday 21 February 2024 – Wednesday 27 March 2024 
  • Travel Period: 22 February – 30 June 2024. 

For operator FAQs, see below. 

HOW TO AMPLIFY

Like all other campaigns, this needs your support for it to reach its true potential. Find below an industry toolkit and some suggestions on how to leverage your own tourism business and marketing with this campaign:

Access the campaign assets for your marketing and owned channels from the River Revival Asset Toolkit.

If you'd like to explore further ways on how to amplify the message, check out our 'Rise Up for our River' Guide, including pre-designed Canva templates for both Instagram and Facebook posts, as well as Instagram and Facebook stories.  

Align your digital marketing with our ‘Rise Up for our River’ campaign by sharing the hero video and other assets such as imagery on your own channels.

For social media, be sure to tag @SouthAustralia and #SeeSouthAustralia to increase the number of people viewing your content.

Use these key campaign messages in your own communications and include examples of your own curious and unique locations and experiences.

Some examples:

‘FEEL’ HEADLINE EXAMPLE
The Murray River, Lakes & Coorong is calling you to treasure it, rediscover it and explore it.

The Riverland is calling you to treasure it, rediscover it and explore it.

‘THINK’ HEADLINE EXAMPLE
[INSERT REGION/TOWNSHIP] needs your support  

There's never been a better time to visit our river regions and Rise Up for our River. 

‘DO’ HEADLINE EXAMPLE
Rise Up for our River

Book now and be part of the revival.

Ensure your Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) listing is up-to-date and promotes your tourism business or experience to its full potential. Remember, this will be showcased not only by southaustralia.com but by up to 260 other distributors of ATDW content.

For information about how to get the most from your ATDW listing, see our ATDW Support & Marketing Hub.



FAQs

OPERATOR PROCESSES AND OFFERS

Expression of Interest applications to participate in Round 3 have now closed. 

Providers will not be charged any commission or fees to participate in the River Revival Voucher program.

If the participating provider is a registered user of one of the following payment gateways, the campaign portal allows consumer payments for bookings to be made directly through those gateways: (a) PayPal; (b) Stripe; (c) Braintree; (d) eWay and (e) Square.

There may be fees associated with a participating provider accepting a pre-payment from a consumer at the time of booking using one of these gateways and the tourism provider will be solely responsible for those fees. Providers are encouraged to check with their preferred payment gateway as to what those fees are.

No. However if the provider chooses to subscribe to the Nabooki premium platform, additional fees and charges may apply and be payable by the provider, as determined by Nabooki.

If you use Rezdy as your booking system, it will integrate with the Nabooki system. For other booking and reservation systems, there is currently no integration.

Consumers will be directed to southaustralia.com/voucher for all information about the River Revival Vouchers.

To make a booking, consumers will be redirected to a booking platform hosted within the SATC’s consumer website (rivervouchers.southaustralia.com) where they will be able to view all available offers across the four voucher categories. The consumer will be able to filter the campaign offers by region, voucher type, or experience/accommodation/houseboat/guided tour price. Consumers can then click through to their chosen offer to make a booking, apply their voucher code as a discount, and where required, make payment for the remaining balance (the difference between the experience/accommodation/houseboat/guided tour price less the voucher discount).

Providers will have discretion to offer and accept pre-payment at the time of booking.

The rebate is payable upon a consumer completing a booking during the travel period in accordance with a booking made with the participating provider and without cancellation.

Where a booking is made, and a consumer does not complete the experience/stay, the participating provider is not eligible for the Rebate.

To notify of the completion of the booking, the participating provider is required to log into its account within the campaign portal, locate the relevant booking on the dashboard and mark the customer as “checked-in”.

Once the customer has been checked-in, Nabooki will issue a recipient created tax invoice (RCTI) and will automatically facilitate processing of the voucher rebate within the stipulated timeframe.

The voucher rebate will be paid to the participating providers bank account within 30 days from the customers check-in date.

If you do not opt in to use recipient created tax invoices (RCTI), you will be required to issue your own tax invoices to Nabooki Pty Ltd t/a Nabooki prior to receiving voucher rebate payments. These invoices should include individual voucher numbers as a reference and be emailed to [email protected]. Any delay in providing a valid tax invoice may result in delayed reimbursement of the voucher rebate.

The campaign Terms and Conditions are mandatory and must be accepted by the experience, accommodation, houseboat or tour provider to participate in the campaign. 

Yes, absolutely! We encourage you to value-add to encourage consumers to stay longer, spend more and return for repeat visits.

Once providers have had their applications accepted, and their offers successfully loaded within the campaign portal, the SATC will share River Revival Voucher branded assets to be used across social and digital media of participating providers.

The SATC strongly encourages operators who apply to participate in the campaign or are seeking alternative ways to leverage the campaign, to review all of their digital marketing channels, including their ATDW listings.

The program will not pull data directly from the ATDW, but we expect an increase of tour searches on southaustralia.com. It is therefore in your best interest to have your product presented with the most relevant, up-to-date content and imagery within your product listing and individual tour types.

For more information on how to optimise your ATDW listing, visit tourism.sa.gov.au/support/atdw.

Yes, providers may wish to offer an additional discount off their regular price. For example, if a provider’s regular price is $200, it may be offered at a special promotional price of $175, which would then become $75 when a $100 voucher is applied. In this example, the $25 discount off the usual retail price is fully funded by the provider.

It is important to consider the best available offer for the consumer. Once pricing is loaded into the campaign portal, it cannot be altered or amended. For example, lowering the price because bookings are low is not permitted.

It is certainly not mandatory to provide a discount to be involved in the River Revival Program.

Each provider may choose to offer up to a total of three (3) offers across the voucher program. This applies to existing product as well as newly created product for the purposes of utilising the voucher program.

Please note it is not mandatory to put forward three offers.

Tourism provides will also have the opportunity to enter two pricing variations for each of the offers within the voucher program. As an example, this may be considered as peak /off peak or winter / spring pricing.

The SATC will not pay the voucher rebate in circumstances where a consumer cancels.

Providers should clearly outline their cancellation policies and provide these Terms and Conditions for upload on the campaign portal during the onboarding process. These policies will be visible to the consumer during the booking process. The provider will be at liberty to enforce these cancellation policies and fees (where applicable) directly to the consumer. A consumer is not entitled to utilise the value of the voucher to cover any cancellation fees.

We will always do our best to encourage unavoidable cancellations to reschedule to a later date, but providers acknowledge this may not be possible.


ABOUT THE PROGRAM AND VOUCHERS

To obtain a voucher, consumers will need to have entered the River Revival Voucher ballot from 19 - 20 February 2024 and been successful in the draw on 21 February 2024. 

Residents of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales who are 18 years and over. Terms and Conditions apply and are available at southaustralia.com/voucher

The booking period for the River Revival Vouchers opens on Wednesday 21 February 2024, upon release of unique voucher codes to consumers, and ends at 11.59pm ACDT Wednesday 27 March 2023 (inclusive).

The travel period is from 22 February until 30 June 2024 (inclusive), bookable seven days a week including Saturdays, school holidays and public holidays.

The River Revival Vouchers can be used only on participating hosted experiences, accommodation, houseboats and guided tours of an equal or higher value. This means:

  • $100 vouchers can be applied to experiences valued at $100 or more.
  • $100 vouchers can be applied to accommodation valued at $100 or more for a one-night stay including Saturday.
  • $200 vouchers can be applied to accommodation valued at $200 or more for a two-night minimum stay, including Saturday.
  • $750 vouchers can be applied to houseboats or guided tours with a minimum spend of $1500.

Yes, the River Revival Vouchers were redeemable seven days a week.

However, providers may apply their own block-out dates if and where applicable, for example, a public holiday, a day they are closed for business, or a traditionally sold-out date.

This could have been done during the onboarding process with the SATC’s agent, Nabooki, after the application had been approved.

Nabooki successfully supported eight rounds of the Great State Voucher program and the first round of the River Revival Voucher program. The company will facilitate the River Revival Voucher distribution, consumer bookings and redemptions, and provider rebates.

Nabooki will be responsible for gathering campaign offers and associated Terms and Conditions from all Riverland and Murray River Lakes & Coorong providers registered to participate in the campaign.

Nabooki will also act as the SATC’s agent in facilitating payment of voucher rebates to Riverland and Murray River Lakes & Coorong participating providers participating.

Nabooki will also assist the SATC in servicing consumer and provider enquiries during the campaign.

The full terms and conditions for the River Revival Voucher program round two are available via southaustralia.com/voucher


CRITERIA (INCLUSIONS AND EXCLUSIONS)

Yes. However, you will need to provide a minimum value of $100. To do this you can offer your experience for two, three, four or five people (or a family) or offer other value adds, or a combination of both within reason. We will not accept adding additional people beyond five to make up the $100 value.

Whilst value adds are allowable, it’s important to remember that the focus in all cases must be on the hosted and guided experience and this is where the most value should lie.

Yes. However, you will need to provide a minimum value according to the voucher category.

$100 accommodation vouchers are for single night stays. If your accommodation is under $100 for one night stay other value adds, such as breakfast, may be added within reason. Alternatively, you may look at multiple night stays and participate in the $200 minimum of two-night stay category.

$200 accommodation vouchers are for a minimum of two-night stays. If your accommodation is under $200 for a minimum of two-nights other value adds, such as breakfast, may be added at the discretion of the SATC.

Yes. However, you will need to meet and or exceed the minimum $1500 spend (the $1500 minimum spend is inclusive of the $750 voucher).

$750 houseboat / guided tour vouchers are for a minimum $1500 spend. If your offer is under $1500 other value adds may be added at the discretion of the SATC.

Whilst value adds are allowable, it’s important to remember that the focus in all cases must be on the hosted and guided experience and this is where the most value should lie.

The $750 voucher will not be redeemable against the deposit of the houseboat or guided tour, and the deposit will need to be covered by the consumer. Tourism providers will be able to issue deposit values, whilst the $750 voucher will be used against the remaining value.

Consumers can redeem multiple vouchers together on the one booking provided that the vouchers are redeemed within the same booking period and the provider’s Terms and Conditions allow for this.

The $750 voucher category is open to houseboats or guided tours.

If you offer guided tours over multiple days, this will encompass accommodation, and be eligible for the $750 voucher category.

Travel agents booking clients into third-party tours are not eligible for the River Recovery Voucher subsidy.

If you are a travel agent that also runs your own tours (either with your own tour vehicles, own itineraries or with your own hosts / guides), you may be eligible to apply, provided you meet all other eligibility criteria.

Travel agents not eligible to be listed are encouraged to get involved by helping their clients to make their River Revival Voucher booking (noting that no commission will be payable) and then building other elements of a package around it to earn commission on the additional components. This is provided by way of suggestion and is not to be construed as advice or direction.

If your business does not meet the eligibility criteria, you may look to engage with tourism providers that service your region and investigate the possibility of including your product within their experience, accommodation, houseboat or guided tour, as part of their offering. All bookings would then be via the participating provider.

An ATDW profile is required to participate in the voucher program and it must be live by the end of the EOI process, Tuesday 6 June.

The ATDW is the most exhaustive list of tourism providers in South Australia and is used by industry across the country. We encourage you to register for the ATDW which can provide valuable exposure to your business. A listing will also ensure that you are considered for future support programs and/or can be promoted by the SATC.

For more information and to register on the ATDW, please visit tourism.sa.gov.au/support/atdw

No, the system is reliant on pre-bookings for operators to enable the SATC to authenticate and track voucher usage.

Generally, no. Standard tastings, flights and paddles in cellar doors, breweries, distilleries which incur a tasting fee will not be considered unless they qualify as a hosted experience. Any tasting experiences which have a fee redeemable on purchase cannot be considered.

To be considered, the experience must be hosted – that is, where staff are dedicated to deliver the experience and provide interpretation throughout. If staff provide this interpretation only as an introduction or when they/the venue is not busy, the experience is not eligible as the hosting element cannot be guaranteed for the duration of the experience.

Yes, provided they are guided tours, and meet other eligibility criteria.

The River Revival Voucher program aims to stimulate existing hosted tours and experiences that have been impacted by the downturn of interstate and international visitation.

Whilst we are not encouraging new product development, in some circumstances it may be suitable to tweak an existing product to cater for the voucher audience.

If you are an experiences or accommodation provider intending to launch a new experience or accommodation with a long-term view of providing this offering, then you may like to utilise the campaign as a platform to promote your new offering.

Yes. They will need to meet all other eligibility criteria.

The program will not accept point-to-point transfers or hourly charters where consumers purely book the vehicle with a driver for a set period. It is not intended to be used on transfers for a day/night out, or for wedding vehicles for example.

If you offer leisure tourism focused tours as a usual part of your business, i.e. a driver hosts and is integral to delivering the experience and is not simply driving from point-to-point, and you organise at least part of the itinerary for your clients, you may submit an application for consideration.

No. The objective of this program is to get people travelling in the coming few months and not putting it off to a later date. If a tour doesn’t happen, then impacted guests need to be rescheduled to a different date within the travel period.



MID MURRAY TOURISM RECOVERY FUND

Mid Murray River tourism operators significantly impacted by the once-in-a-century flooding event will receive an additional $500,000 in funding to support the return to full operations, staff upskilling, marketing activities and funding for events. 

Eligible businesses include those located primarily in the Mid Murray Council region and low-lying neighbouring areas that were impacted. 

The funding includes $150,000 to be shared among five councils impacted by the flood to support new and emerging events - Mid Murray Council, Berri Barmera Council, City of Murray Bridge, Renmark Paringa Council and District Council of Loxton Waikerie. Additional funds will also provided to the Mid Murray Council to support tourism recovery efforts.

A further $300,000 will be allocated to support businesses significantly impacted by the floods, with grants of up to $50,000 available through the Mid Murray River Tourism Business Support Program. 

The remaining $50,000 will be used by the South Australian Tourism Commission to provide support to impacted businesses, through a combination of marketing and media spend.

MID MURRAY TOURISM RECOVERY FUND INFORMATION


CONTACT

For operator enquiries relating to the River Revival Voucher onboarding process, please email Nabooki at [email protected] or call 08 7093 9777.

For other enquiries, please contact [email protected]