Chinese New Year revellers to supersize their celebrations with a 'Giga Selfie' on Sydney Harbour

6 February 2016

Tourism Australia is giving Chinese visitors in Sydney for Chinese New Year the chance to mark their most important national celebration by getting involved in a “supersized selfie” overlooking the world-famous harbour and opera house.

The promotion which starts today (Saturday, 6 February 2016), forms part of this year’s Chinese New Year Festival being hosted by the City of Sydney and will take place against the backdrop of a giant Chinese dragon head installation at Dawes Point.

The Chinese New Year ‘Giga Selfie’ follows a highly successful trial on the Gold Coast in September last year and is part of Tourism Australia’s ongoing efforts to encourage visitors to share their stories and experiences on social media to encourage their friends and family to holiday Down Under.

Tourism Australia Managing Director, John O’Sullivan, said the promotion would provide a perfect platform for Chinese visitors in Sydney over Chinese New Year to share part of their holiday experience at a time when their social networks are abuzz with celebrations.

“Chinese New Year is the most important celebration in the Chinese calendar. It’s a huge holiday and with our Giga Selfie promotion we reckon we’ve come up with a great way for our Chinese visitors to share a wonderful experience of enjoying this very special occasion here in Australia,” he said.

Travellers will stand on a designated spot to get their Giga Selfie taken using proprietary technology designed by Canon Australia and a series of special cameras positioned 1km away across the harbour.

A link will then be emailed to them which they can share as a short video clip which starts as a close-up selfie and pulls back to reveal their spectacular harbourside location including the iconic Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. People taking part will be encouraged to share their Giga Selfie across their social media profiles, including Instagram and WeChat.

“We’re all about helping people make their experiences more enjoyable through photography, so developing the Giga Selfie technology for Tourism Australia was exciting. There are so many opportunities for the latest Canon technology to deliver experiences that weren’t possible before now and we look forward to our next project,” said Canon Australia’s Director of Consumer Imaging, Jason McLean.

The campaign is being pre-promoted in China across a wide range of channels, including Sino Weibo and WeChat. Mr O’Sullivan said that while the Giga Selfie promotion was primarily aimed at Chinese visitors, anybody in Sydney was welcome to take part and share across their social media channels using the #GigaSelfie hashtag.

The importance of China to Australian tourism was confirmed last month with the latest international arrivals figures confirming that Australia has now officially exceeded one million annual visitors for the very first time. Recent forecasts indicate the market could be worth up to $13 billion annually by the year 2020.

Tourism Australia’s Chinese New Year Giga Selfie will take place between Saturday 6 and Sunday 14 of February from 9am to 8pm at Dawes Point at Sydney Harbour.

Olym Li, a Chinese-Australia resident of Sydney, was amongst the first to have his Giga Selfie taken at Dawes Point.