Acting chief executive Graham Budd said the decision not to promote the resort across the Tasman during the summer was made before the world financial crisis hit earlier this year and it was "probably too late now" to launch a campaign.
This year was the first time Destination Queenstown had money to spend in Australia and the regional tourism organisation was following the example of Tourism New Zealand, which had never run an Australian summer promotion because it was traditionally a peak season.
"If we tried to stretch $1 million over every season it won't be enough, so we had to focus on core campaigns to cut through and be effective," Mr Budd said.
"Our money is finite. We could only [market in summer] by re-allocating from our autumn or winter seasons.
"I'm sure as every week of summer goes by, we're going to get feedback from our members and it's a case of monitoring the season."
Destination Queenstown had a total budget of $2,970,000 including marketing, overheads and salaries.
The marketing budget was $1.92 million including the commercial levy applied in July.
Mr Budd said 10% of the extra million had been spent on costs involved in employing a new consumer marketing manager, who started work about six weeks ago.
Another 10% was allocated to extend the domestic spring campaign "Spring Into Summer", which had run for the past couple of months.
The $170,000 campaign included national press advertising, participation in the Automobile Association's domestic destination campaign, plus the distribution of 250,000 postcards around the country, specifically the lower South Island, Wellington and Auckland.
Staff attended adventure travel and backpacker shows in Melbourne in March, Sydney last weekend, and will be in Brisbane this weekend.
"The 80% of funding unspent at this point is all allocated for the autumn and winter campaigns for the Australian market," Mr Budd said.
"The levy process started a year ago and it's fair to say we didn't or couldn't have anticipated the world economic crisis, but we did anticipate the tourism environment was getting more inherently competitive.
"We identified the Australian market had huge growth potential for Queenstown and the need to get our brand more recognisable."
Campaign effectiveness would be judged, in part, against official Ministry of Tourism arrival figures although "we want to do relatively better than other regions in attracting Australians".
Mr Budd was pleased with the support from commercial operators and he knew the levy was a big commitment for a small town, but the marketing budget was "not really enough to achieve everything we'd like".
Members would probably need to discuss future funding in the next year or two, he said.
