Van-Tastic Adventures - Building the ultimate Aussie road trip

I thought I'd peel back the lid on our latest traveller program / promotion / love affair - Van-Tastic Adventures !

The Ambassador Program - 2006-2008

Two years ago we 'skinned up' a lovely van offered up by Travellers Auto Barn, filled it with wanderlust travellers heading around Australia, slapped it on the bumper bar and watched it drive off into the sunset.

The aim was to see what amazing experiences they could have on a road trip and look to share them with our World Nomads community and hopefully other travellers as well.

In the end we had 35 'Ambassadors' travel in the van who wrote hundreds of blogs, shot thousands of photo's and filmed some hilarious videos.

All in all we were incredibly happy with the results, had created a program that engaged an active travel community and created some amazing content. This content had allowed us to not only to to deliver and connect with new travellers, but also position our brand as more than just a stuffy insurance company !

Van-Tastic Adventures - 2009-2010

So after guiding the old girl back into Travellers Auto Barn we decided it was time to get a new van and up the ante on what had been a successful program to date.

So what would we do? We set out a list of goals for the program as follows

1. We want to harness the filming-blogging-podcasting skills of adventurous travellers.
2. We want to support local travel operators and help showcase their tourism product by having our Van-Tastic adventurers film, blog and podcast about them.
3. We want to engage state tourist organisations in the program and allow them to show active support for their tourism constituents.
4. We want to create a documentary, blogs and podcasts of what it's like to road trip around Australia and see if we can get this content out through a range of channels and support our Van-Tastic adventurers in building their own personal travel brand !
5. Open it up to travellers from all over the World !
6. Have a bucket of fun along the way !

So in a nutshell here's what the program looks like

We're looking for seven pairs of travellers, one for each of Australia's stunning states, to become Van-Tastic Adventurers over the next year.

We'll fly the winners in from anywhere to take the Van-Tastic van on a 6 week filming-blogging-podcasting road trip with $1,000 worth of fuel and camera/laptop to share their adventures on the road. Our partners throw in a stack of free local adventure activities for each team (scuba diving the barrier reef, sailing the Whitsundays....the list goes on)

Each adventurer/team then puts together a mini-doco of their trip to be voted on by the travel community. If they win, they get a cool $10,000 and Virgin Blue flights.

We've got great support from state tourist organisations, Virgin Blue, media partners such as TNT Magazine, Indie Travel Podcast, Global Gossip, plus a raft of other excellent supporters along the way.

First leg of the program, Van-Tastic Queensland, closes for applications July 5th, so we're just starting to get our first taste of aspiring Van-Tastic Adventurers....very cool !

If you're keen to find out more, visit Van-Tastic Adventures or drop a line to amanda[at]worldnomads.com if you need more info.