Its getting worse…………now Sydney loses top tourism spot
A report in The Sydney Morning Herald says that Sydney has been eclipsed by Melbourne as the nation’s leading tourist destination, new figures show, earning $400 million more from domestic travel than its northern rival last year.
In another blow, the 2008 edition of 100 Greatest Trips, published by the US edition of the magazine Travel+Leisure, features just one city in its list of top trips in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific: Melbourne.
The Victorian Government has increased spending on “marketing Victoria” in this month’s budget. The total funding is $79.4 million, compared with $55.9 million in NSW. The Sydney industry, which fears losing even more visitors to Melbourne, is demanding that the State Government increase its funding in next month’s budget.
March statistics from Tourism Australia showed that Melbourne earned more from domestic tourism spending than Sydney – for just the second time in published records, according to the industry group Tourism & Transport Forum. Domestic overnight visitors to Melbourne also spend more per person – $698 – than visitors to Sydney, who spend an average of $610.
“The question you have to ask is: are the attractions of Sydney … sufficiently great enough for people to be enthusiastic about coming here?” Luna Park Sydney’s general manager of sales, Gary Daly, said. “I’d have to say at the moment … probably not.
“I don’t think [Sydney] can any longer trade on the fact that we had the Olympic Games once.”
But Tourism and Transport Forum’s national tourism manager, Caroline Wilkie, says that is precisely what has been happening.
“The State Government … thought once the Olympics were over they could start cutting funding, whereas our competitors, particularly Victoria, have gone hard on tourism.”
Between 2000 and last year NSW’s share of international visitors dropped 7.6 per cent, according to figures compiled for the Herald by Tourism & Transport Forum.
Victoria’s share grew by 12.2 per cent.
“Sydney thought it would all happen after the Olympics,” Tourism Victoria’s chief executive, Greg Hywood, said.
“Melbourne doesn’t take anything for granted.”
Despite the figures, a spokesman for the NSW Tourism Minister, Matt Brown, denied that Melbourne had crept ahead.
“Sydney attracts more total expenditure than Melbourne.”
There’s more money from total tourism flowing to Sydney than to Melbourne,” he said.
Since the early 1990s, Victoria has employed a much-celebrated strategy of bringing big events to Melbourne, Mr Hywood said. And it has marketed Melbourne as an experience rather than a series of tourist attractions.
“The danger, when you have icons, is that you think ‘Well, we can tick those boxes’,” he said. “The rest of Australia seems to brand itself in terms of rocks and reefs and harbours, they’re constantly saying come to our beach or our reef whereas [Melbourne is] very much saying come to our city and have an experience.”
by The Mole
John Alwyn-Jones
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