Hospitality Industry News

By Dr David Beirman

On December 15, 2009 Federal Tourism Martin Ferguson released the Long term strategy for Australian tourism.  As a national strategy the report appears rather flimsy for a national tourism industry which according to the report contributed $40 billion to Australia’s GDP , $23 billion of export earnings and directly employs half a million Australians.  As a response to the far more weighty Jackson Report submitted to the Minister a few months earlier the Long Term Tourism Strategy generates more questions than it addresses.  As a strategic report it doesn’t even bother to set a target date. Is this a strategy for next year or for 2030 In my reading of it, the report appeared more like a document to talk about strategy than a strategic document.
Essentially the report contained nine key points.

1. Positioning for Long Term Growth:
   In essence the report places a great deal of its faith on Tourism Australia marketing Australian tourism towards growth in both the inbound and domestic tourism sectors.  Although it also mentions the role of state and regional tourism bodies there is little on offer except for a slight increase of the tourism marketing budget.
   
   
2. Leadership
   The strategy places a great deal of expectation on the tourism ministry council which includes RET (Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism) working with state tourism ministries and the Tourism Ministry of New Zealand.  There is also the concept the National Tourism and Aviation Advisory Committee representing the interests of the tourism industry’s’ private sector.  It would be helpful to know which elements of the wider tourism and hospitality industries will be represented on this advisory committee.  As most industry professionals are only too well aware, the
   voice of the industry is made up of many disparate elements. This has been the cornerstone of the industry’s lack of real political clout in Australia.
   
   
3. Research
   The strategic report correctly identifies the importance of ongoing research. However the solution suggested in the Long Term tourism Strategy appears to suffer  by diving into a great pool of bureaucracy to identify research needs.  I have no argument that supporting relevant research is necessary and that research outputs need to be better governed than was the cases under the CRC(Cooperative research Centre) for Sustainable Tourism model. Incorporating Tourism Research Australia into the government Ministry instead of Tourism Australia is actually a retrograde step as it will further distance industry orientated tourism research from the needs of the industry. There is no mention about the role of tertiary educational institutions in the research agenda.
   
   
4. Facilitating Investment and regulatory reform
   This is an important issue in helping make Australia a competitive destination. In our region, many countries are using tax breaks, subsidies and a wide range of other inducements to attract investment. The strategic report essentially promises a regulatory reform working group to discuss reforms. This is not strategy, just discussion of a process towards strategy.
   
   
5. Labour and Skills
   The strategic report correctly identifies the importance of a highly skilled workforce
   and the training and educational infrastructure to support it.  Australia is actually well placed in its provision of tourism and hospitality industry education at the TAFE and higher education level although there is room for improvement. Ironically many of our higher educational institutions are training many overseas students who finish up doing an excellent job competing with Australia. Important as it is to help our neighbours who pay fat fees to learn from Australians, a scholarship scheme to encourage more Australians to study tourism and hospitality skills may be more useful the strategic document’s idea to set up a tourism Minister’s Council working with Service Skills Australia to develop a strategy.
   
   
6. Responding to Challenges
   The key challenge mentioned in the report is climate change and for Australia this is indeed a very real challenge. So much of our coastal tourism infrastructure is vulnerable to rising sea levels and floods. Drought, bushfires and lack of water are very real threats to many of our inland attractions. One of the few points that the strategic plan managed to get right is that these problems are an all of government issue which apply as much to tourism as any other industry.
   
   
7. Excellence in Product and Service Delivery
   Naturally if Australia is to be competitive, service standards have to be of world class. National accreditation is definitely a step in the right direction. A national strategic document should provide some more detail as to how this will be implemented.
   
   
8. Strengthening our competitiveness with industry and product development
   There is no argument about the overall sentiment of this section. Essentially what it should be clearly addressing is the issue of identifying Australia’s unique selling points as a tourism destination and to provide the requisite government support to attractions and businesses which address them. The strategic report correctly indentifies indigenous tourism as one area of focus. However Australia has many USPs including our flora, fauna,  unique landscapes, our uniquely Australian brand of multiculturalism and the outback just name a few.
   
   
9.  Measuring performance.
   This essentially relates to the research agenda but it is important that we need to measure Australia’s performance against global and regional standards.
   
   The issue which this report manifestly fails to address is how does Australia attract both a larger number of overseas tourists who spend money and do more to encourage Australian to see their own country rather than everywhere else. Australia has done exceedingly well in the qualitative measures of inbound tourism but our visitor numbers are far lower than the potential. A strategic report worthy of the name should have addressed these issues. Perhaps Mr Ferguson and RET has a real strategic document hidden away somewhere. If so could you please share it with the Australian travel industry.  
   
   The Author is a Senior Lecture in Tourism at the University of Technology-Sydney