Tourism Queensland's 'Best Job' Hits Million Mark

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. January 16, 2009

JANUARY 16, 2009 - More than a million people around the world have visited Tourism Queensland's "Best Job in the World" website, launching the campaign into what one Australian internet media outlet has described as "cult status".

Tourism Queensland Regional Director Americas, Shana Pereira said she had been absolutely gob-smacked by the response to the campaign, in which Tourism Queensland is advertising for an "Island Caretaker" to spend six months exploring the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef and reporting back on their experiences.

"The Best Job in the World offers the successful candidate, who will live in a luxury oceanfront villa on Hamilton Island for six months, the opportunity to explore the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef, including snorkeling, sailing and island-hopping - and be paid a salary of AUD $150,000 to do it," Ms. Pereira said.

"The campaign was launched internationally on Monday and while we always knew it would be successful, even we underestimated just how much noise it would create across the globe. It seems the world, from the USA to London to Mongolia, Argentina to Vatican City and everywhere in between is talking about The Best Job in the World. We also have reports of Americans walking into the Australian Embassy in Washington with applications in hand."

"At one point 25,000 people had tried to access the website in just one hour. This morning we reached a milestone - 1 million unique visitors to the wwww.islandreefjob.com site have looked at more than four million pages," Ms. Pereira said.

"We have also received over 1500 applications last night alone taking us up to over 2000 applications. "The traffic to the website has been so huge that Tourism Queensland has had to quadruple its server capacity."

Ms. Pereira said the website problems had now mostly been rectified but there could still be periods of extremely high traffic during which the website might be slow. "I would urge people trying to access the site to be patient however and keep checking back."

The Best Job in the World is open to applicants from anywhere in the world who must submit a 60 second online video application stating why they are the best person for the job.

"We are looking for someone who is outgoing, creative and adventurous so I would encourage anyone thinking of applying to take their time, think of the most creative way possible of making their message stand out from the crowd and put together the best application they can," Ms. Pereira said.

Applications close on February 22 with a short-list of 11 candidates to be flown to the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef in May for a final interview process and the successful applicant to start in July.

For further information, visit www.islandreefjob.com.