From the AFR come a nice little piece of press release journalism today:
Tourism Australia will invest a record $200 million this year in marketing the nation as a tourism destination throughout the world by expanding partnerships with states and territories, industry and international airlines.
Outgoing Tourism Australia chief executive Andrew McEvoy said the record investment was being made on the back of strong international and domestic tourism growth, increased aviation capacity and renewed investment in the nation’s tourism infrastructure.
“Australian tourism is performing well and remains a key driver of economic growth and employment,” he said at the Tourism Directions conference in Canberra on Tuesday.
“Despite ever increasing global competition and the high dollar, we’ve enjoyed a record 6.3 million international arrivals in 2013 and a sustained bounce back in domestic travel, with Australians taking around nine times more trips in their own country than overseas.”
That’s an interesting perspective. What I find in our tourism hotspots is overcapacity and decay because of this:
There has been a muted return to growth since McEvoy was appointed in January 2010:
But the tourism trade balance has only stabilised
Of course this is all dollar-related and miles beyond McEvoy’s ken. I’ll concede as well that I know absolutely nothing about the man, except he’s joining Fairfax as head of events, but tourism is going nowhere fast and it serves no purpose to say otherwise.
