Tourism Directions Conference presents industry futures

Despite natural disasters and the strong Australian dollar, Australian tourism is on track to double its annual overnight tourist spending to AU$140 billion by 2020.

Speaking at this week's Australian Tourism Directions Conference in Canberra, Tourism Australia Managing Director Andrew McEvoy said although recent figures from Tourism Research Australia ha shown that traditional markets had weakened over the past year, growing markets in greater Asia and New Zealand have helped maintain the country's tourism levels.

With tourism growing by up to 4% over the past year, McEvoy explained growing Asian markets particularly from China are "all-critical" to Australia's tourism, stating "Australian tourism is strategically well placed to benefit from 'the Asian century', being a one stop flight within the same time-zone, but our industry must remain focused so that it is not a lost opportunity.

"That's why we are now fast-tracking an expanded approach and targeted effort towards India."

McEvoy added that as part of their overall Plan the Group will "renew" its attention in Asia with a new campaign that aims to triple spending from India based arrivals to $2.3 billion by 2020 and markets from China to $3.6 billion.

As part of the push, Tourism Australia unveiled the next phase of the 'There's Nothing Like Australia' campaign, that will launch digitally in 2012, targetting high yield travellers from Asia.

McEvoy added that the "'There's nothing like Australia' campaign is resonating with our audiences and gives Tourism Australia an excellent platform for taking it to a new level.

"This is about putting our best foot forward; raising our marketing up a few notches and really focusing on the many examples of Australia's world's best tourism product."

With Tourism Research Australia having this week released its State of the Industry report, the Australian Tourism Directions Conference is being hosted by Martin Ferguson, Minister for Resources and Energy and Minister for Tourism and Senator Nick Sherry, Minister for Small Business, Minister

Assisting on Deregulation and Public Sector Superannuation and Minister Assisting on Tourism.

The report shows that tourism expenditure in 2010-11 is down 3% in real terms, with business expenditure having increased by 6% against 2009-10 and in addition, international visitor numbers are up for the year, but expenditure is down and the number of Australians travelling overseas continues to increase, up by 13% in 2010.

The Government's backing for tourism has been criticized by Shadow Tourism Minister Bob Baldwin MP who suggests new initiatives failed to offer "anything of substance, provide any direction, or announce an initiative to help the sector."

Baldwin added "what's the point of a Future Tourism Directions Conference where the Minister provides no future direction?

"It was reminiscent of the Prime Minister's speech last month to the Tourism Transport Forum Leadership Summit.

"The sector doesn't need to hear platitudes about how important it is, how resilient it has been over the past year, or reassurance that the Minister will continue to hold round tables.

"The sector needs to hear something meaningful or useful. And endless round tables without action only serve to frustrate the sector; with operators commenting that round tables feel more like roadblocks.

"Imparting facts like 60% of people use the internet to research holidays and 40% use the 'net to make bookings is not at all useful. The industry knows this already.

"What could have won the government less muted applause is how Tourism Australia's website can be improved to provide information in Chinese, or that the Government will improve backlinks to Regional Tourism Organisation websites.

"Tourism deserves better than this."

The full Tourism Research Australia having this week released its State of the Industry report can be downloaded at www.ret.gov.au/tra