Grey clouds hang over Sunshine State tourism

Courier-Mail, 11 June 2008

TOURISM has a dirty little secret. We are losing our ``mojo'' and this has major implications for the Sunshine State - traditionally the powerhouse of Australia's tourism industry.

While the number of overseas visitors nationally has gone up slightly since 2000 (1.9 per cent), this is a dismal result compared with the global increase of just over 4 per cent. Much of our growth has actually been from students and business travellers.

Asia Pacific as a tourism region is going gangbusters (more than 6 per cent). Even our nearest neighbours are leaving us for dead.

The number of first-time holiday-makers coming to Australia has declined in the past seven years. This is disturbing given that we rely heavily on repeat visitation. If we're not getting more people to come in the first place, our numbers certainly aren't going up in the future either.

Domestically, we are ``flat lining'' at best. Low-cost carriers to Asia and a high dollar are luring Aussies off-shore in record numbers while we fail to make Australian tourism sexy to locals.

This year, Queensland has suffered summer floods, the withdrawal of airline services (domestic and international) and now news that interstate tourists are going to be charged more for petrol. Some areas are going to be hit worse than others, with Cairns and the Whitsundays to feel the brunt of the airline cuts. Tourism operators are showing that forward bookings are already down.

The Queensland Budget was handed down this week with no good news for the industry. Given the challenges being faced by all Queensland tourism small business operators, now is the time for the Government to step in and help its regional communities that face severe impacts.

While rising fuel costs and the high Aussie dollar are contributing factors to the state of the industry -- they are a smokescreen for some of the more deep-seated issues -- they cannot be solely blamed for poor performance. As an industry we can't influence exchange rates or global fuel prices -- but we can get our other ducks in a row.

We're not capturing the attention of overseas travellers and we need to make sure we have the right experiences. We have some, but not enough of them. We need more investment -- new hotels, new attractions, new theme parks and new eco experiences.

Put simply, if you came to Australia five years ago, would there be anything new for you to do if you came back today? Nothing springs to mind. Certainly there have been some excellent unique five-star developments, but they can't meet the numbers we need.

Developing new tourism product is inherently risky. You can get a higher return with an office block than you can with a five-star hotel. Even if the returns on tourism investment were higher, you would still have to face miles of red tape within the current state and local planning regimes.

Planning processes are strangling new tourism investment. We don't want a return to Gold Coast-style governance of the 1980s but nor should we make developers unwilling to invest in Queensland.

Why does this matter? Because more than 136,000 Queenslanders work in this industry and tourism is worth more than $22 billion to the state's economy every year.

We have to focus on leadership for the industry. Too often we just look at pleasing all destinations by marketing them equally. We need to have the courage to pick winners. Not every Queensland country town is going to be a tourism mecca. Marketing these areas to a wide audience, with tight budgets, won't change this.

The National Tourism Strategy will hopefully provide a bold vision for the next 10 years and beyond at a Commonwealth level.

State and Commonwealth Governments can support industry through strong marketing and a healthy and supportive investment climate. However, industry also needs to step up and accept that it needs to innovate and find new ways to regain its ``mojo''.

Another big TV advertising campaign isn't going to save us. But hard work, innovation and old-fashioned entrepreneurship just might.

Christopher Brown, Managing Director, Tourism & Transport Forum (TTF)