The massive missing piece of Australia’s Tourism approach
It’s taken me a while to get the Tourism Thinking piece together given the extensive travel this year that has enabled me to assess where Australia’s tourism is not getting things right. This update won’t paint the full picture (a couple of clients have first crack at this research) but it is important enough to be able to give you the quick thumbnail sketch. And let’s just say that complaints about the high aussie dollar are somewhat of a smokescreen even if it has choked a few travellers out of the marketplace. Here’s the quick take:
1. Going back to the enormously successful ‘throw a shrimp on the BBQ’ campaign featuring Paul Hogan, what everyone seems to have missed is the single core element that Commercial contained and it is this: Paul Hogan issued a PERSONAL invitation for people to come and visit. The Lara Bingle ’emulation’ failed utterly because it wasn’t perceived as a personal invitation but a somewhat rude demand for a reason why people weren’t coming. And the gloriously expensive ‘postcard’ model of recent times is still stuck in the old model of tourism. Other tourism groups here in Australia know I’ve been telling them to ‘move beyond postcards’ since about 2005
2. TA has failed to capitalise on the largest factor in its favour – Australians heading overseas. Can you get any more direct than to have Aussies heading OS hand over a PERSONAL invite to people they meet, to come to Australia? The advertising campaigns might be big and sexy things to put together, but they miss completely the CORE success capability available
3. In some of the more interesting places I’ve been to this year, there is a growing discontent with the Australian traveler. In one high end tourism crowd, an expat who has been living in that town for a few years told me that the ‘locals have had it with drunk, obnoxious and disrespectful aussie hoons who think they have a right to carry on like fools.’ A local police office I spoke to in that town said ‘unfortunately when it comes to social disobedience, more and more frequently we are finding its your fellow Australians in the centre of the ruckus’
There’s more to say about costs of hotels, poor service and other aspects. And if you’re in the Tourism industry in Australia, the personal approach is something I can encourage you to take a HIGHLY focused look at.
In a recent article in The Age, Clive Williams of Macquarie University’s Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism suggested that athletes booked in to attend the Commonwealth games in India need to consider a terrorist attack as a potential wildcard. Whilst an interesting perspective, I’d like to suggest that a potential terrorist attack at…
Read More >If my information is correct, the 14th of February is the start of the New Year and instead of the usual flowers and chocolates, you might be wise to invest in another gift for your heart’s desire Because Feb 14 is the start of the Chinese New Year – the year of the Tiger. So…
Read More >Had any thoughts yet? I have – plenty and judging from the number of media inquiries it appears lots of other people are also curious to know what might lie ahead in the next year or next decade. I’m putting my thinking hat on so that we can consider what 2010-2019 might hold, the second…
Read More >I’m tipping that Consensus will be reached at Copenhagen this week. Alas it will be a consensus for more talking, thinking and commitments to agree to a proposal to set a time for a discussion around more concrete targets. In otherwords, a commitment to not commit. The politicians waver whilst our planet is being poisoned.…
Read More >The cycle of consumption rears its head as it has done for quite some time. Consumption is neither good, nor bad, it ‘just is’ and right now the majority of media exposed potential consumers are being lured, enticed and occasionally conned into parting with their hard earned money to satisfy needs and whims. Some consumers…
Read More >Our son has just celebrated his fifth birthday and although we don’t make a huge fuss about milestones (the kids get a party every second year), there’s no doubt that he is learning about desired future outcomes and goals. I doubt he is different from most kids in his ability to spot something and declare…
Read More >Here’s a little something I’d like you to think about. Are you really who you say you are? And, how do I know that I can trust you? Identity Theft is one of the most debilitating crimes a person can suffer for it strips away the very core of your own belief system and that…
Read More >‘World – we have a problem’ (apologies to astronaut James Lovell). We are killing ourselves with food and it’s happening at both ends of the continuum – millions starve each day whilst a gluttony caused obesity epidemic is killing others off in different ways. We have a growing global population requiring sustenance, whilst Climate Change…
Read More >Anyone looking at the final rainfall figures for Melbourne’s rainfall might be heartened by the news that the final result was about 10mm above the September average. Compared to last year’s disastrous result where we had about 12mm, it was over 50mm better. But I wonder if the final result, and the current ‘average’ isn’t…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber discussed the future of travel at the ANTOR session at The American Club in Sydney, NSW on the 24th of September. Along with Angela Smith from Roy Morgan Research, Martin Kelly from Travel Trends and Gail Rehbein from the Australian Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility Marcus proposed some of the emerging…
Read More >