A few weeks ago, I received an email from Delta announcing a contest called “Australia Someday” in which you could enter a daily drawing to win a free trip from Delta.
While I didn’t expect much from the promotion, I always click through to see if there is anything that might be of interest to myself and readers of this blog.
So I clicked through on this ad as soon as I received the email and nothing happened. Apparently the australiasomeday.com website had crashed, because all I received on my browser was a blank page. I kept on checking throughout the day and it still wouldn’t work.
The next day I checked again and saw a loading screen on the site for the first time in about 5 years since Steve Jobs publicly denounced the use of Flash for websites. 
But then the site loaded and I was blown away! Delta’s Australia Someday website is actually gorgeous, functional and really cool!
They appear to be using a web development technology called Parallax, where you scroll down on your website to view different content without leaving the page. That explains the long page load times because you have to load the entire media rich website all at the beginning.
Then you get to start looking at the destinations that Delta is offering throughout Australia and it really makes you want to visit Australia!
The site has a rich multimedia experience that allows you to view videos and photos of the destination, review some trivia and answer a question about the destination they are offering you to visit. To enter, you need to drop a pin of the location they are offering you to visit on a map. The entrant who has the closest pin point will win that particular trip.
Now I am not sure that any of us really has a chance at winning the contest, but I decided to give it a try and enter the first few contests. There are 52 possible entries, one per week for a year. Hopefully I will have time to enter a few more before the contest closes on April 21st, 2014.
For those of you who have always wanted to visit Australia or just like entering contests, I encourage you to go ahead and enter. There’s nothing to lose but your time.
Plus, look at all of these beautiful options! It’s like the sexiest geography lesson you’ll ever have in your life!
I personally learned about a few destinations that I’d love to visit the next time I go back to Australia (I proposed marriage to Mrs. Jeffsetter while visiting Sydney in 2011, so we have fond memories).
I also learned where the web development team at Delta appears to have been spending their time lately. And who can blame them – would you want to make your award booking engine work or look at gorgeous photos of Australia all day?
Note: Realistically, I know that Delta IT probably has nothing to do with this site and it was probably done by an award winning advertising agency. But I have to take every opportunity I can to call out Delta’s terrible award booking engine.
It would be amazing if a reader of Jeffsetter were to win one of these trips!
Good luck to all and be sure to visit Australiasomeday.com and enter before the contest closes April 21st, 2014.
What an incredible contest!!! Thanks for posting about this!! I just entered for a trip in August, it would be so cool to go there!!
Crossing my fingers
Any idea if they’ve announced the winners yet?
Someone told me that they were still figuring the winners because the actual mathematical part was very labor intensive. I hope I win a trip! :) Good luck to both of us!
I have to agree that the math they are using must be ridiculously meticulous, because the contest entry didn’t really seem to have a rhyme or reason for where you dropped the pin.
As an American who has never visited the beautiful country of Australia, I knew very little about many of those locations. I learned so much, and loved doing the research. The islands off the coastline were so cool, I would love to see Tasmania. :)
I have not seen anything on this yet.
Any word on the winners? This was a really fun contest to enter, and I did all 52 times!
They have not announced the winner yet, as far as I can tell. Hope they do soon!
still no word on the winners?
I believe that they have mailed a copy of the winners to one of our blog readers, but I have not seen the list online.
I received an email that I had won a trip. I really hope it is real. I would love to see of winners to actually verify.
Wow, congrats!
You would think the competition website would have been updated to say the winners had been notified even if they didn’t want to release names, or a generic email to all participants saying thanks for entering but you were not a winner.