Tourism Tasmania Tells Tourists to Stay Away — On Purpose

Tourism Tasmania's new campaign flatly declares the island state "not really for tourists" — and the state agency is paying former SBS newsreader Lee Lin Chin to deliver the message.

The campaign leans on a blunt piece of research finding: tourists can't stand other tourists. Prof Can-Seng Ooi, a professor of cultural and heritage tourism at the University of Tasmania, put it in unusually direct terms.

"Studies have shown that tourists hate themselves," Ooi said. "They want to avoid each other."

The campaign's centrepiece is a short video. A man gets pointed to the back of an endless queue for a "world famous" pastry. He gives up on the line and finds solitude in the Tasmanian outdoors instead. That's the pitch: skip the crowds, head for the silence.

Chin fronts the push. She lives mostly offline, without a mobile phone, and appears in videos walking the state's trails during her visit. Prof David Waller, a marketing expert at the University of Technology Sydney, said her presence does specific work.

"Lee Lin Chin is adding humour to the message," Waller said. "Lee Lin Chin is an icon – intelligent, avant garde and [she has a] dry sense of humour."

Why tell visitors to stay away?

Tourism Tasmania's CEO, Sarah Kingston Clark, said the campaign was deliberately wry rather than anti-visitor. The intent, she said, is to reflect the "tensions" of modern travel.

Ooi said those tensions are real and measurable. Stressed people yearning for "quietness" are the campaign's target audience, especially those living in urban cities on the mainland. The strategy works because of how people label themselves.

"It taps into the type of tourist people want to be," Ooi said. Australians prefer identifying as a "traveller" rather than a "tourist", he added, because "tourist" carries negative connotations.

Ooi brings 20 years of research credentials to the analysis. He spent two decades living in Scandinavia, studying how tourism, culture and heritage drive the development of regional destinations. He sees a clear Nordic echo in Tasmania's creative.

"The message is very Scandinavian, even the imagery: the sauna, the vinyl records, the books and so on," Ooi said. "Instead of the cold north, we are talking about the cold south … it's a quiet place, time slows down."

What does reverse psychology do for the regions?

Char-lee McLennan, an associate professor from QUT's school of management, said the campaign uses "an element of reverse psychology". That mechanism could deliver a commercial payoff: steering visitors beyond established hotspots and spreading spending into regional economies.

Waller framed Tasmania's "Come down for air" theme as a narrower argument than a blanket snub. It's less "anti-tourist", he said, and "more anti-overcrowded, line-joining, tourist destinations".

McLennan flagged the risk. The campaign's success, she said, depends on whether the real experience of visiting Tasmania lives up to its promise — and on whether it delivers meaningful economic benefits to regional communities. A promise of quiet is easy to make. An island that actually delivers it, and routes the revenue accordingly, is the test.