Franziska Weiss and her husband Tom own and run the Jamieson Caravan
Park in Victoria’s North-East. She joined the Digital Solutions program in late
2019, originally for assistance with social media marketing, but found welcome support
after COVID-19 hit and caused unforeseen challenges for the business.
“As the owners,” Franziska says, “we are always improving the
facilities, guest services, and working together with council and local tourism
organisations.”
As part of these constant improvements, the next logical step was to
enhance the business’s online presence. While guests can book their holiday stays on the caravan park’s website
homepage, Franziska shares that the website was established when they first
bought the business. They otherwise didn’t have an active digital presence. “We
weren’t online. Holidays are still very much an offline experience.”
A group workshop on social media run by the Digital Solutions program
in partnership with her local council prompted Franziska to join the program.
“Social
media is evolving and changing rapidly,” she says. “I find it important to stay
up to date.”
While the business did not have a digital strategy in place, she
understood that Jamieson Caravan Park needed to be online as much as possible
for guests to find them. It was important to her to provide as much information
as possible online, make it easier to be found on Google, advertise online, and
develop a strong social media presence.
“Mentoring was definitely what helped me the most,” she says. “My two
mentors taught me a lot about Facebook and Google. I wasn’t a beginner in
either, and the detailed and enormous knowledge helped me a lot. Our homepage
definitely wouldn’t be what it is now, and we wouldn’t be found as easily on
Google, if I hadn’t had mentoring.”
In addition to the knowledge of the mentors, Franziska appreciated the program’s
capacity to customise mentoring to her individual needs.
This flexibility provided even greater value in the face of the
pandemic.
Featured links
