Promoted by Study Gold Coast

Study Gold Coast: An academic haven for Chinese students

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The Gold Coast is an education destination with a community that has created an environment that welcomes international students and supports them in a safe and friendly place. The city is a vibrant hub that is home to a diverse cultural scene. Students from around the world are drawn to its lifestyle and institutions that provide globally-recognised educational programmes, taught in world-class facilities.Gold Coast, a gorgeous coastal city on the edge of the Asia-Pacific rim, is not merely a major draw for businesses, investors and thrill-seeking tourists; its world-class universities and easy access to two international airports, also makes it ideal for students seeking the perfect study abroad destination.

Enter Study Gold Coast, the peak industry and city marketing body for the Gold Coast education and training sector, located in Bundall, a suburb of Gold Coast, Queensland.

Through its promotion of various study abroad strategies and advice on how to get the most out of the student experience, Study Gold Coast educates the community and grows the city’s international pool of talent, ultimately attracting more successful, global employers and contributing to the depth of the city’s social fabric.

“Positioning the Gold Coast as a leading education destination empowers the city to move into the next stage of its lifecycle as a globally-connected hub,” Study Gold Coast notes.

One such promotional initiative, according to Study Gold Coast’s CEO Shannon Willoughby, is the “China to the Gold Coast – an Education Experience” campaign, a project dedicated to tapping into the ever-growing Chinese student market.

Study Gold Coast, recognising that it is perfectly positioned to attract students from this region with its cutting-edge educational structure and high standards, rolled out the campaign in collaboration with the Chengdu Education Bureau and a number of esteemed education partners on October 29 last year.

For the campaign, a competition was launched through popular Chinese social media channels offering winners the chance to grab a two-week study experience at a Gold Coast institution.

The campaign, Study Gold Coast says, drew a staggering 1,500 applicants. A group of 12 students from Chengdu and greater China were eventually selected from this pool and they were flown on the Wuhan-to-Gold Coast route as part of an exclusive Study Gold Coast partnership with Wanda Tourism Investment.

“The campaign was designed as an opportunity to tell a different Gold Coast story to the Chinese market – one that focused on promoting the city as a leading education destination, rather than concentrating on the city as a hub solely for tourism,” Willoughby said.

“The campaign reached an audience of more than 46 million people in China and laid the ground-work for some incredibly important relationships within the Chinese education sector.”

Not only did the campaign represent a crucial opportunity for Gold Coast city to augment its knowledge economy by nurturing connections with China, which stands not only as the world’s second-largest economy overall, but also as the world’s largest market for international students. According to China’s Education Ministry, 523,700 Chinese nationals studied overseas in 2015.

Willoughby said commitment from both the local and state government, paired with Study Gold Coast’s existing Chinese partnerships, put education front and centre as the Gold Coast trades on its wit to become a global leader in international education.

“The legacy of this campaign will help develop stronger links for our education institutions in the vital Chinese market and will transform the perception of the Gold Coast to one of the country’s leading education destinations – not just a great place to visit, but also to learn,” she said.

China to the Gold Coast – an Education Experience represents one of many campaigns in the pipeline for Study Gold Coast, an organisation that hopes to roll out across multiple key source markets in order to raise its profile – domestically and internationally – as Australia’s Favourite Classroom, and the world’s most popular education city.

Keep up to date with Study Gold Coast via the website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WeChat and Weibo.