Hughes PR | Work | West Beach Parks PR & Comms

West Beach Parks PR & Comms

West Beach Parks is a premier destination offering award-winning holiday accommodation and recreational, community and sports facilities. For the past two years, Hughes has supported West Beach Parks with 24/7 communications and PR, offering strategic advice, proactive storytelling, issues management, stakeholder engagement, videography and social media and digital content across a broad range of communication activities.

Objectives

The West Beach Parks master plan focuses on protecting the natural environment while enhancing visitor experiences to fulfill its vision of becoming "Australia’s favourite tourism, sport, and leisure destination for all”. Strategic goals include boosting its destination appeal, strengthening community inclusion, ensuring environmental and financial sustainability, and fostering business and workforce growth.

Key objectives to help achieve West Beach Parks’ Vision include:

Developing, enhancing and promoting West Beach Parks for the benefit and enjoyment of the community and visitors.
Enhancing and protecting the reputation of West Beach Parks.
Promoting West Beach Parks as an employer of choice to help attract and retain talent.
Promoting the diverse offerings at West Beach Parks and the evolution of offerings across Holiday, Sport, Recreation, and Community.
Helping drive booking enquiries to West Beach Parks during key periods.
Ensuring effective engagement and support of West Beach Parks’ tenants.
Ensuring effective messaging, reach and engagement with key stakeholders through West Beach Parks’ social media channels.
Ensuring ongoing stakeholder engagement through direct channels.

Elements

Hughes has worked closely with West Beach Parks to provide strategic communications advice to the Board, CEO and Executive Team for a range of requirements and activities affecting a diverse number of stakeholders. Our work has included announcing major investments and developments, creating engaging stakeholder content, delivering consecutive award-winning tourism submissions and providing day-to-day media and communications support.

A strategic and integrated communications process has been adopted to provide West Beach Parks a range of services – from crisis response to social and digital media strategies, media relations and media event management, stakeholder and reputation communications management, and proactive PR. The scope of work has included:

Crisis communications planning and 24/7 response to potential and unfolding issues across the various activities of the Precinct.
Developing and implementing communications strategies to support key announcements, developments and launches.
Creating and executing strategic communications for significant projects and initiatives affecting various internal and external stakeholders, marketing and business operations.
Developing and implementing stakeholder management and engagement frameworks and plans to help smooth delivery of West Beach Parks’ activities.
Gaining earned media coverage to promote new guest experiences, support re-branded services, promote new products and highlight sustainable initiatives.
Supporting South Australian tourism campaigns.
Developing engaging and relevant content through owned channels to support marketing activities to drive booking enquiries during key periods.
Writing reports, submissions and presentations to engage key stakeholders, support funding and investment opportunities, and promote the strategic goals of West Beach Parks.
Responding to day-to-day media enquiries.
Developing, managing and creating content for West Beach Parks’ social media channels and quarterly stakeholder newsletters.
Developing an organic social and digital media strategy, including content creation and scheduling, to enhance existing channels and integrate seamlessly with broader communication objectives.
Delivering a strategic, data-driven approach to social media, including completing website and social media performance and strategy audits to boost performance and lift engagement.
Developing scripts, filming and production of quarterly CEO videos for own social and digital channels.

Results

West Beach Parks is one of South Australia’s go-to destinations for tourism, sport, and recreation. It proudly hosts the state’s largest holiday park—and for two years running, it has been crowned the best in SA.

With new, better-connected spaces and offerings opening across the Precinct, more visitors are discovering everything West Beach Parks has to offer, bringing a boost to local businesses and creating real benefits for the community. Behind the scenes, Hughes has played a supporting role in this ongoing growth and transformation through:

Successfully managing a communications and media strategy for the announcement and launch of the $2.9m The Square at West Beach Parks. The campaign reached more than 455,000 people through 30+ media mentions across online, radio, print, TV, and national industry outlets, such as Australasian Leisure Management.
Effectively supporting the announcement of a new brand partnership with Discovery Parks through careful development and successful delivery of internal and external communications across various stakeholders and positive media coverage at the brand name launch (mentioned in 13 media items across TV, print, and online, with an audience reach of more than 470,000).
Gaining earned media coverage to: promote new guest experiences ($1.8m state-of-the-art adventure playground ‘Central Park’); support re-branded services (The Pat GC); promote new products (launch of Trackman Driving Simulator and Saltwater Shacks); spotlight sustainable initiatives (bee hives boost biodiversity to golf precinct); and raise brand awareness through site activations (Gather Round, Easter and Summer).
Providing strategic crisis communications counsel and support for managing issues affecting the Precinct, such as boat ramp closures.
Improving website traffic from organic social media (increased by 336 per cent year-on-year) and growth of organic reach across all social platforms (the highest was 675 per cent increase on Facebook).
Creating a video file library of high-quality vision spanning across the Precinct and its varied activities and uses.