Australia's national tourism marketing body has issued a PR services tender, seeking to establish panels in Brazil (and Latin America), Canada, China and Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, the UK and US. The tender also covers business events.

A TA spokesperson said that the decision to move towards a panel model followed a global review and was aimed at ensuring that all of its key international markets had access to the best available public relations services across a broad range of requirement and also that Tourism Australia continued to receive full value for money.

The agency panels will provide support across strategy, media and stakeholder relations, influencer programs, content generation and publishing, social media, brand and reputation (including crisis) management, and ad hoc projects including event/campaign management and business events.

The tender provides for each market to secure the best agencies that have a local presence and can best support the requirements of that particular market.

The exact number of agencies comprising each panel is likely to vary by market.

All agencies will be selected through a competitive tendering process and will provide Tourism Australia access to their services over the next three to five years, if needed, on a project-by-project and market-by-market basis.

Only those markets where the existing PR agency contract arrangements are coming to an end in 2015 have been included within the tender.

Germany, France, Italy and Indonesia have been excluded from this tender process as there are existing agency arrangements in place within those markets until 2016 and/or 2017. A procurement process will be undertaken for these markets in due course.

Current contractual arrangements with each incumbent agency still stand, all of whom will also be invited to respond to the tender.