Make Domestic Tourism a Priority says Golden Chain
One of Australia’s largest accommodation groups has called on State and Territory Governments to focus their efforts on domestic tourism rather than chasing international travellers.
Mr. Bryan White, General Manager of Golden Chain Motor Inns, says governments are wasting money on International promotion when they would help Australia and its economy more by promoting domestic tourism.
Speaking at the official opening of Golden Chain’s 100th motel in New South Wales – at Macksville – Mr. White said some governments were spending millions of dollars trying to attract International tourists while Australians were being encouraged be international airlines, international tourist offices and travel agents to travel overseas before they see their own country.
“We have got it back to front,” Mr. White says, adding, “Domestic tourism is falling alarmingly but no-one (very few?) seems to care.
“In 2005, visitor nights fell 7.1% and in the same year, the total number of domestic trips fell by 5.9%.
“To put it into better perspective, between 1998 and 2005 the number of trips per capita fell from 5 to 4.3.”
“Most concerning of all is that visitor nights per capita fell from 19.7 in 1998 to 4.3 in 2005.
“That’s a frightening statistic.
“To make matters worse, the current drought, now in its sixth year in some areas, has exacerbated the trend and we are finding that tourist numbers are falling alarmingly.
“It is not only a phenomenon in Australia. There are similar trends in most developing countries – the United States, United Kingdom and parts of Europe.”
“In our own motel directory we list more than 2,500 attractions for Australians to enjoy – many of them unknown to the majority of Australians and in the middle of a drought we ought to be encouraging Australians to visit regional Australia to help keep regional economies buoyant, but instead we have State and Territory governments reducing spending on tourism and spending more money on doing the job of Tourism Australia in promoting themselves internationally.”
Mr. White said it was cheaper to encourage Australians to visit their own country and more likely to carry impact because the will travel to regional areas, unlike International tourists who mostly stick to the capital cities.”
“We have thousands of Australians looking for new experiences – and they are being told to find them overseas.” “Yet we have the experiences available right here in their own country and we are not getting the message through to them,” he said.
“It seems to us that some priorities are wrong, we need to sit down with the State and Territory governments and the rest of the tourist and hospitality industry and plan a way to reverse this situation.”
“We need to plan a way to develop regional tourism, particularly at this time when our regions are in the grip of the worst drought in memory.”
Report by The Mole
John Alwyn-Jones
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