Powered by the “Giga Selfie” app, on Sept. 5 and 6 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., tourists (and locals, of course), will be able to “trigger a distant camera which captures them and the surrounding landscape.” No need for a super-sized selfie stick, folks — rather, the high powered camera located around 364 feet away will snap a memory that you and everyone in your vicinity (whether they know it or not) can treasure for a lifetime.
In a statement, Tourism Australia managing director John O’Sullivan noted that this latest campaign will capitalize on the existing interests of its Japanese tourists, who clearly contribute significantly to the industry. Said O’Sullivan, “Japan has long been an important tourism market for Australia, with more than 320,000 Japanese visitors traveling here in the past year alone and contributing more than $1.4 billion in visitor spend. With new air services coming online this year there is a real opportunity to further grow travel from Japan and capture the renewed interest in Australia as a travel destination.”
And what better way to renew interest than allow for current visitors to send family members back home a giant selfie on the Gold Coast? After the selfie is taken, both the photograph and accompanying video footage will be emailed to the subject, and they can then share the “image as a short video clip which starts as a close up selfie and pulls back to reveal their location.”
O’Sullivan continued, “The ‘Giga Selfie’ campaign will help to raise the level of conversation about Australia in Japan as people share their incredible experiences of holidaying here with their friends and family back home, and in turn helping to encourage more Japanese travelers to follow in their footsteps.”
Tourism Australia has yet to decide whether they will keep this project running after the weekend, but will first assess the overall success of its debut before making any moves. But come on, how could a selfie taken by a camera 100 times more powerful than a normal device sitting hundreds of feet away not be a smash hit?
