The ATE 07 wrap up begins – Geoff Buckley MD of Tourism Australia give his views.

Appointed in 2006, after the sudden and apparently controversial departure of Scott Morrison, Geoff Buckley took over the role of MD at Tourism Australia at a difficult time, but six months into the job he seems to have his feet firmly under the table.

The Mole asked Geoff how it was all going.

This is the biggest ATE that we have even had and I wanted to make sure that the critical interaction between the buyers and sellers took place as it should do.

This is to enable the sellers to be able to sell Australia to the key buyers smoothly and that buyers and sellers were both happy with the outcome.  What I am hearing is as we draw the event to close, that both Eastern and Western Hemispheres have both been deemed a great success by both buyers and sellers, with everything working the way it was meant to giving both buyers and sellers the chance to do business and the sort of interaction that they wanted to have.

The Mole asked Geoff if this included the State and Territory Tourism organisations and if we were seeing a new level of cooperation between the Federal and State Governments.

Geoff said that there was no doubt that we have all worked fairly hard on gathering the forces of Australian tourism and that relationship with the State and Territory Governments is crucial to us if we are going to beat the competition that we know is out there, so than answer is yes and we all recognise that we have to work together to meet these big challenges.

We are starting to work together to identify the areas where we can work together very efficiently, including the web aspects of our work and trade events another where we work very closely.

The Mole asked Geoff that in a world where everyone was measured by numbers, what had he expected out of ATE 2007.

He said that we are measuring the success of ATE around our satisfaction surveys and they will tell us on top of what we have been told so far if ATE has been successful.

What we have not done for a while is to look at what sort of business is created as a result of ATE, but at the same time, we believe that the role of ATE is changing and is less about what is written at the show, but more about the relationship and the identification of product opportunities or lead generation.

I did not have a pre set amount of dollars around the business written in the show, but initial feedback is that some good business has been written here as well as great relationship building and maintenance.

The Mole asked Geoff how much Tourism Australia spent on ATE and was surprised to find that except for staff and admin costs, ATE washed its face and was cost neutral and by hard by hard work it had build the reputation as the best show if its kind in the world.

He said, so on the one hand it is expensive to run, but on the other hand, it drives very strong revenue and does not cost Tourism Australia anything over and above those staff and admin costs that we absorb.  So the income from sponsors, exhibitors, entries and so forth covers the cost of the show.

The Mole asked post ATE 2007 what were Geoff’s big objectives moving forward.

We clearly have a challenge with the Japanese markets and we are looking to take a very clear leadership role in the Japanese market, with the others areas very much in the business events area, with TA having two key targets in leisure and business events which are high yielding and profitable.

We are looking at the allocation of resources to assist us in achieving these objectives.

We have also undergone some changes over recent months and I have realigned the executive team to what I perceive to be a better match against our corporate strategy and I have split the Easter and Western hemispheres into two parts given their very different challenges.  We market in 23 different markets around the world so we need to make sure we have the skills to do this work in those markets and the resourcing for this now in place, with Richard Beere heading the Eastern Hemisphere and we have just this week appointed Michael Londregan to head up Western Hemisphere and he will be starting back in Australia from the US on July 1.

We also have Tim Fischer leaving us in June and he will be a great loss, with the challenges we are facing meaning that we need another great leader to take us forward.

With funding now firmly in place for four years of $555million, thank you Geoff and good luck for the future of Tourism.

Thank you.  We are very lucky to have this funding in place and I know that the feedback I get from the heads of some other NTO’s that we are viewed with some envy not only in relation to funding but also in terms of the teams we have been able to locate in Australia and around the world, in terms of innovation and best practice.

We are certainly seen to be in the top tier of global NTO’s and in terms of spend we are high compared to population, we are well and truly outspent by some, but hey we just have to thinks smarter!

A Special ATE 2007 Report on location by The Mole