Queensland, May 14, 2009 – Ben Southall, a young British adventurer, was named as the winner of the “best job in the world” competition. The $150,000/year job entails working as a caretaker of Hamilton Island in the Withsundays.

The 24-year old is a charity fund raiser concentrating on African countries, which he has travelled extensively. Southall hails from Petersfield in Hampshire. This martial arts black-belt holder and marathon runner has worked as a tour guide in Africa and charity events manager, and his leisure pursuits include managing a music festival. He was the winner among the 16 shortlisted candidates for the position.

The competition was for a job as a caretaker of an Australian tropical island. It is part of a marketing experiment by Tourism Queensland. The winner will live in a luxury villa on the island for six months. As part of his duties, Southall will be exploring Hamilton and adjoining islands. The task entails sailing, snorkeling, scuba diving and posting photographs and writing about his adventures in his blog to attract tourists to Queensland.

Tourism Queensland is said to have spent $1.7 million on the job ad, but gained an estimated $100 million in publicity and promotion for Queensland. The job advertisement attracted 34,684 applications from 200 countries.

“This has been a fantastic campaign but the key now is for Tourism Queensland and the wider Queensland tourism industry to convert the global interest into visitors to Queensland: to bring more tourist dollars into Queensland’s economy, protect existing tourism jobs and hopefully create new ones,” said Queensland Premier Anna Bligh.

Source:
theaustralian.news.com.au