Tourism marketing case study: Little Ship Club Seafood Spectacular

In this tourism marketing case study we look at what we achieved for the Little Ship Club.

The Little Ship Club has a 180 degree panoramic views of sparking Moreton Bay and is renowned for being a unique place to kick back and watch some magnificent sunsets.

Located on North Stradbroke, the Club celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2021 and has a long history with the Royal Australian Navy Reserve and the Naval Auxiliary Patrol.

The results achieved from using tourism marketing include bookings, income and brand visibility.

In 2019 the Australian Day Seafood Spectacular achieved 140 table bookings and a couple hundred walk-ins.

In 2020 the event achieved:

• 36.5K people reached on the Facebook event
• 713 Responses to the Facebook event
• 205 increase in Facebook fans (115% increase, from 1,883 to 2,168)
• Editorial placement on p. 10 of the Redland City Bulletin
• Promotion via the local Redlands Coast Tourism Facebook page
• 280 table bookings (fully booked)
• 520+ walk-ins during the morning, lunch and evening
• 800+ people attended the event (235%+ increase on 2019)
• 3 new full membership application forms
• Increase of revenue of approximately 165% in comparison to 2019.
• Live footage from the Little Ship Club Seafood Spectacular
• Mud Crab Races at the 2023 Seafood Spectacular.

In 2021 and 2022 continued to deliver a healthy surplus with 2023 delivering a surplus of $14,300 (a 36% net profit). In 2024, the event delivered the highest surplus to date of $17,000.

One other key achievement is being able to use the event to help raise awareness of the Little Ship Club as a destination place for people to visit.

"Sustainable Marketing Services helped the Little Ship Club achieve a 10% growth in membership in 2020/2021 during COVID and helped us achieve a surplus over $160,000 (before depreciation) in 2020/2021. (We had significant deficits over $162,000 in 2019 and $129,000 in 2018.)

Maria Anderson, their managing director, has a high level of experience in business strategy, marketing strategy and implementing marketing. She restructured our Club and outsourced the bistro and stopped it from losing money. She is also our treasurer and works with our bar staff to manage the Club. Our staff are more engaged with her leadership and management.

One of the key reasons for Sustainable Marketing Service’s success is introducing marketing communications to keep members informed and engaged during COVID. They adopted a transparent communication style. The critical tactics used were newsletters and social media. We have received enormous unsolicited positive feedback from members about their appreciation of our communications.

Maria and her team have many years of experience using marketing to assist membership-based organisations change attitudes, increase engagement, grow membership, and make improvements to the bottom line.

She has organised special event days to attract members and the public to our Club, such as the seafood spectacular and special music days. These events help us generate an additional source of income above our member subscriptions.

During lockdown in 2020, our members were not allowed to visit our Club on North Stradbroke for a significant time to protect our indigenous population from COVID. During this time, she used Facebook and newsletters to keep our members engaged and connected with our Club, and we had a strong retention rate in 2020/2021 and now in 2021/2022.

She maximised attendance of members and the public at our events through Facebook, newsletters, local area marketing and radio advertising on BayFM and 4KQ.

One of Maria’s strengths is her ability to prioritise the marketing activities that deliver the best results first, or address the biggest marketing problem first, before moving down the list of marketing priorities.

Now that we have a more profitable income coming (and have built up some cash in the bank), she is focused on increasing our tourism visitors and events business for weddings and events."

Mark Neilson, Commodore, Little Ship Club Qld Squadron 2022