Peter Switzer says Little trouper a big lift for tourism

In an excellent report today Peter Switzer reporting from G’day USA says that Bindi bashing by well meaning intellectuals and self-appointed morality monitors not only shows they know little about the random results of good and bad parenting, it underlines that they show they know little about small business.

And as Terri Irwin and Bindi Irwin feature prominently in the Federal Government’s G’Day USA: Australia Week promotion in Los Angeles, the howling about Bindi’s over-exposure demonstrates that the critics don’t understand small business families such as the Irwins.

An ABC documentary series Dynasties has focused on families such as the Ansetts, the horse-racing Hayes and the chocolate-making Leas of Darrell Lea fame.  The stories of family businesses such as these are not always picture-book ones but in reality, how many family case histories are?

The simple facts are that circus families don’t close down the circus when the patriarch dies, neither do restaurants, regional airlines, farms, retail outlets. Need I go on?

Bindi is simply more visible but her family’s business was always like that. She’s in the public eye because her family’s business was about the family. Singing, acting, political and media family businesses often over-expose their families.

Ultimately, the quality of Terri Irwin’s parenting and the good luck of whom Bindi runs into in her life will determine how this young person develops. But for now, it’s on with the show and it’s an important one for the Irwin business, as well as the tourism business in Australia.

Tourism is a $75 billion industry and creates jobs for more than half a million Australians with 200,000 of them in regional Australia. To understand this industry’s significance, this figure is more than mining, agriculture and forestry combined.

Tourism earns Australia more than $19 billion in exports and to keep this in perspective, this is more than the earnings from meat, wool and grains.

To show how the industry has an all-pervasive national economic impact, 48c in every tourism dollar spent is in regional Australia. And most of this involves the 90 per cent of tourism operations that are small businesses.

Adding to the national importance of the tourism sector, the Australian Bureau of Statistics says that over 86 per cent of Australian exporters are either small- or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

“This confirms previous research by the bureau, which showed SMEs to be the ‘engine room’ of the Australian exporter community in terms of growth potential,” Austrade’s chief economist Tim Harcourt said. “Around 13 per cent of SMEs export and this has remained pretty stable over the past couple of years.”

Exports are critical right now with the country notching up its 56th consecutive trade deficit. The latest, November, showed an improvement at $665 million and that was $178 million better than the previous month.

Helping this result was a 2.9 per cent fall in imports and a 0.6 per cent rise in exports.  On an annual basis, exports were up 15.2 per cent on a year ago with imports up only 5.9 per cent.

“Australia is no closer to paying its way in the world,” said CommSec chief equities economist Craig James. “Despite the biggest commodities boom in living memory, the trade accounts are still mired in red ink,” he said.  “And the only reason that the shortfall improved in the latest month was a smaller import bill for oil and gold,” Mr James said.

“The Australian Government has boosted tourism funding by more than 60 per cent over the past five years,” said Minister for Small Business and Tourism Fran Bailey.

“The international tourism industry is performing strongly and China and India are key emerging markets for Australia,” she said. “Within a decade, China will be our largest tourism market and Indian tourism grew at 33 per cent last financial year.”

Right now, British tourism is our most valuable tourism market, with British tourists spending $1.9 billion in Australia.  That’s an increase of $125 million in 12 months.

While the overseas tourists are holding up, despite a dollar close to US80c, the minister’s department says domestic tourism industry is flat, with many Australians buying plasma television sets instead of travelling. The minister has even copped a media serve for spending too much on her rescue mission of Tourism Australia’s “So Where the Bloody Hell Are You?” tourism campaign, starring model Lara Bingle.

Though it faced a British ban and some head scratching in Asia, strong international interest followed the outlandish ad with a 92 per cent boost in hits to the Tourism Australia’s website.

American Michael LeBouef, the author of the book How to Win Customers & Keep Them For Life, says being outlandish is at the core of business success.

“Anybody can come up with new ideas,” he argues. “What’s in short supply are innovative people – persistent mavericks who believe so strongly in an idea, they will do whatever it takes to make it a working reality.” The Irwins, the Lara Bingle ad, G’Day LA and even the minister herself have to stand out from the crowd to bring international tourism focus on a country that needs more exports, within which tourism is crucial.

In the year to June, international tourists contributed $18.8 billion to Australia’s economy, with visitors from the US, the third-biggest spenders behind those from Britain, and Japan. However, the number of visitors from the US is down 10 per cent from the peak in 2001.

Selecting Terri Irwin to promote Australia to the US tourism market is smart business-thinking of which Dr LeBoeuf would be proud.

Report by The Mole from material provided by Peter Switzwer at G’Day USA