Events
The massive missing piece of Australia's Tourism approach
Friday 25 November 2011
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.
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Events
Tuesday 8 May 2012
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Wednesday 2 May 2012
Ernst & Young and GreenBiz have completed a survey of business executives looking at the development of Corporate Sustainability around the world. The report shows that there has been a clear rise in awareness; that employees are a core source driving sustainability actions; that reduction of costs is a core appeal and that return on investment in sustainability actions is required to be judged in the same way as other corporate investments. For me this poses a dichotomy of thinking - the environment was built up over millennia and our use of it has taken just a couple of centuries yet we judge sustainability actions at the same 'speed of delivery' criteria. That poses a challenge and is perhaps an unrealistic set of expectations.
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Tuesday 24 April 2012
On the eve of ANZAC day here in Australia ABC Radio Darwin's Vicki Kerrigan chats with futurist Marcus Barber on the future of war - what the future triggers of war might be and how war will be fought
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