Visit Phillip Island: Naturally Playful, through every season

Destination Phillip Island’s site carries the “Naturally Playful” brand through every season, with ATDW Products, instant search, village trails and a live llms.txt.

Visit visitphillipisland.com.au

Client: Destination Phillip Island
Region: Victoria
Edition: Tourism Edition
Recognition: Silver, 2021 GOVT Design AwardsSilver, 2021 Melbourne Design Awards

Visit Phillip Island - Home page hero: ‘Naturally Spring, Naturally Playful’ in script over a shopper browsing a clothing rack

The challenge

Destination Phillip Island, the regional tourism board for Phillip Island and Bass Coast, sums up its destination on the home page: “101km2 of amazing experiences distilled into one easygoing island sanctuary”, near enough for a short drive from Melbourne and far enough to feel like an escape. The rest of the site shows the job it has taken on.

The Penguin Parade is, in the client’s words, world-famous, and the Grand Prix Circuit home to two world-class motorcycle championships. The site gives both their due, but Discover opens eight doors: the island villages of Cowes, Rhyll, Ventnor and Newhaven, the surf coast at Cape Woolamai, San Remo at the mainland end of the bridge, Bass Coast & Surrounds beyond it, and Love Phillip Island (Millowl). See & Do runs from coastal walks and cycling trails to wineries, breweries and seafood.

Seasons are the second thread. The home page is re-dressed for each season, spring’s line being “Naturally Spring, Naturally Playful”; the blog’s winter piece is “Into the Wild, Into the Warm”; the Whale Discovery Trail runs mid-May to September, peaking in June and July; and the Grand Prix headlines the events calendar.

And the board serves two audiences: Visitors on the main site, and on a separate industry site the partners and Operators it represents as the region’s peak tourism organisation.

That gives the site three jobs. Put the whole island and its coast on the home page, beside its icons. Change with the seasons. And carry a large, constantly shifting body of Operator content.

Visit Phillip Island - Illustrated island map: green Phillip Island map with orange cluster pins, a ferry, a whale and seabird illustrations — The illustrated island map: Product clusters on a green island, with a ferry, a whale and seabirds drawn in.

What we built

Visit Phillip Island runs on Roam’s Tourism Edition: a bespoke theme built on Roam’s shared component library, with ATDW Products, search, maps, itineraries, events and AI Discovery included.

Design approach

The brand line is “Naturally Playful”, and the header lockup carries it under the island’s name on every page. The home hero is a full-bleed campaign photograph with the season’s line set across it in a flowing italic serif (“Naturally Spring, Naturally Playful” in the spring capture) and a search field centred beneath it.

Headlines are set in an italic serif while body copy runs in a monospaced face, a pairing that reads as handmade. Sub-pages switch to tall uppercase display type over full-bleed photography: CAPE WOOLAMAI across the cape’s clifftop, NATURE & WILDLIFE across a line of little penguins. The palette is warm: terracotta, apricot and cream, with one teal-blue reserved for editorial panels. Organic cut-out shapes run along section edges and frame the photography.

Visit Phillip Island home page, captured top to bottom — visitphillipisland.com.au home page, full length

Platform features

ATDW Products. Operators, attractions and experiences appear as Products sourced from the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse, as on the Penguin Parade page, which carries the ATDW mark and books through ATDW’s redirect. A Product page carries a gallery, a Mapbox map, address and hours, contact and booking links, accreditation and detailed accessibility information.
Instant search. The hero search and a dedicated search page split results into Products and pages, with a region filter. A filterable Product map sits on the home page.
Itineraries and trails. Five village trails (Cape Woolamai, Newhaven, Rhyll, Smiths Beach and Ventnor), each a drive with a suggested time and numbered stops linked to local Products. Walks & Trails gathers walking and cycling trails, the Whale Discovery Trail and the Phillip Island and Bass Coast Touring Trails.
Events, deals and news. An Events hub with a full calendar (the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix, the Superbike World Championship, the Island Whale Festival and the Tidal Seafood Festival), a Deals page filtered by region and type, newsletter capture on every page, and a Blog for seasonal editorial such as “Naturally Spring: Experience Spring on Phillip Island”.
More than one audience. A Chinese-language visitor information page sits in the main navigation, and a separate industry site gives Destination Phillip Island’s partners their own home: the partnership programme, the Official Visitor Guide, industry development and news, and the region’s Destination Management Plan, “Towards 2033”, under the vision “Tourism for the greater good”.
AI Discovery (included on every Roam site). The site publishes a live llms.txt, opening “# Phillip Island” and describing the destination for AI assistants: quick facts, accommodation, attractions, tours, food and drink, events, trip planning and FAQs, built from the site’s own content and its ATDW data. The file did not exist when the site won its awards; it arrived as a platform update.

Content and information architecture

The Discover section’s eight doors lead to place pages.

Above that sit six plain doors (Discover, See & Do, Events, Stay, Plan and Blog) and a Planning section that answers the practical questions: getting here and around, accessibility, pet-friendly travel, road trips and visitor information.

Visit Phillip Island - Cape Woolamai page: a couple on a clifftop track overlooking the ocean — A place page: Cape Woolamai, a couple on the clifftop track, under tall uppercase display type.View all 6 images

The outcome

Visit Phillip Island won Silver in Digital Travel at the 2021 GOVT Design Awards and Silver in Traveltech at the 2021 Melbourne Design Awards. Those awards recognised the site as it was in 2021; this case study describes the site as it stands in 2026.

The home page is re-dressed season by season, the blog carries new posts, and the site publishes a live llms.txt. On Roam, features built for one destination reach every site on the platform at no additional cost, and when the look needs to change, the theme is refreshed on the same platform.