Despite declaring record tourism figures for October, the SA government says it will review its marketing strategies in light of criticism of last week's Sam Smith concert.
The government has not disclosed exactly how much was spent luring Smith to an exclusive gig at McLaren Vale that was attended by competition winners and media personalities.
It has also declined to reveal how much royal family member Zara Tindall and her husband Mike were paid for a trip – documented on the latter's Instagram page — in which they attended events including the Adelaide 500 Supercars race.
Tourism Minister Zoe Bettison has previously said the government's successful bid to host Smith's curtain-raiser to his 2023 Australian tour cost less than half a million dollars. And Premier Peter Malinauskas said analysis would take place to "make sure bang for buck was received".
A large number of social media influencers and media personalities posted about attending the concert, with many mentioning they had been invited by the South Australian Tourism Commission.
Ms Bettison today defended the strategy of using celebrities and influencers to market the state, but said a review would be conducted, amid calls for greater transparency about how much was spent.
"We're going to review that and then look at other ways that we could have communicated, but this is the new way of marketing," she said.
"We've got to be different, we've got to be innovative.
"One of the key things we look for is a diversity of ways of engaging people. So certainly our events calendar has got a lot of attention, and that's a key thing."
SA's record tourist spend
Ms Bettison made the comments at a media conference spruiking the state's tourist spending figures for October, which totalled almost a billion dollars.
The government said the $929 million injected into SA by interstate and international visitors was the "highest monthly visitor spend ever".
"Events like the World Indigenous Peoples' Conference on Education, events like the World Rose Convention, the Australian Space Forum — these are all bringing in people," Business Events Adelaide CEO Damien Kitto said.
Opposition spokeswoman Jing Lee welcomed the October figures, but said they demonstrated the tourism sector could perform strongly without celebrity marketing.
"What we have concerns about, of course, is that if we're travelling so well, then why do we need to spend taxpayers' money on the Sam Smith concert, which was an exclusive event for a limited number of people," she said.
Asked whether the government had paid for anyone to attend the current Tour Down Under for marketing purposes, the premier said "every Tour Down Under has ambassadors associated with it".
"The counterfactual, of course, is that we don't advertise, we don't have ambassadors for major events — and that would be crazy," Mr Malinauskas said.
He said it would take about two to three months to calculate the economic impact of bringing Smith and the Tindalls to SA.
"One of the virtues of the social media platforms [is that] you can get a relatively instantaneous assessment of how many people have viewed a particular page and how many have liked it," he said.
"But what really matters more is about how that reach impacts on the revenue you're trying to generate."
