by Mat Churchill


Oprah's Ultimate Australian Adventure goes to air from tonight, with Channel 10 showing the four, one hour episodes at 7.30pm on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday.

The shows were going to air in the US from last night, and will signal the start of Tourism Australia's new campaign to attract US travellers to our shores.

And while the campaign starts now, it has been a long road for TA to get to this point with discussions with Oprah's producers lasting nearly two years.

As is often the case with tourism campaigns, measuring the success can be an inexact science, but TA spokesperson Rachel Crowley said they are going to great lengths to gather information.

"We're going to have lots of measures. The commercial sector, who actually do the transactions, will measure the sales of the the advertised product, but there will also be those who buy independently and those who get up-sold to other product.

"At TA we do surveys and research that will give us some data from which we'll extrapolate, but the truth is there will be people who one, two, three years from now will come because of the shows," Ms Crowley said.

"That will be harder to measure but we'll continue to ask for the foreseeable future, if the shows played a role in their decision to choose Australia.

"We're also analysing the messages in the shows and we'll be surveying fans of the show to see if they increase their interest in an Australian holiday."

Ms Crowley said that TA are happy with their investment of $1.8 million, even before the first passenger has booked.

"We know the our investment has already been recouped in publicity. That said, visitors will ultimately be the final measure and we're confident we'll have some good data over the coming twelve months."