The Hindu Business Line : Tourism Australia allots $360 m for brand building

TOURISM Australia, an organisation promoting tourism of Land Down Under, will air Australia in new light. The signature campaign, `Australia A different light,' highlights the great tourism experience of Australia. However, it falls short of alerting tourists against existing problem of fly-by-night operators.

The Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) in a media statement released earlier this month confirmed the prevalence of "rogue" operators, who charged for free services such as beach walks, forced visitors into shopping expeditions for over-priced goods and operated poor itinerary.

"There is a challenge from organisations who make a quick buck, and slaughter visitors experiences, but that has not affected the inbound traffic numbers," said Ms Maggie White, Regional Manager, South & South East Asia, Tourism Australia, while suggesting that there was no need to set aside ad spending towards this initiative.

"The Federal government is doing a great job in curbing these elements, and we being a tourism outfit restrict ourselves to promoting tourism," Ms White said.

"This is an occurrence in most tourism destination, especially in China. It is important that people are aware of visitor load in Australia, as Australia offers great holidaying experience," she said, while adding that Australia has witnessed a 22 per cent hike in visitor arrivals from India this year.

For the new campaign, Tourism Australia has set aside $360 million of advertising spends for next four years, and this includes India specific-spends of $3 million. However, this will be spent on brand building. The media statement further stated that Queensland and Gold Coast state governments have taken the lead in tackling this issue and Gold Coast is proving to be an excellent testing ground. This is a national problem that needs to be addressed by each state, ATEC opined.

The below-the-line activities in India includes a SMS campaign in tie up with Barista's Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore outlets, and choosing 350 travel agents from 100 agencies to market the experience package for honeymooners. However, even the below-the-line budget allocation does not make any provision for alerting inbound tourists.

"The Federal government is doing a great job in curbing these elements, and we being a tourism outfit restrict ourselves to promoting tourism," Ms White added.

"This is an occurrence in most tourism destination, especially in China. It is important that people are aware of visitor load in Australia, as Australia offers great holidaying experience," Ms White said, while adding that Australia has witnessed a 22 per cent hike in visitor arrivals from India this year.

According to Tourism Australia, the visitor arrival forecasts from India are expected to total 64,200 in 2005 (13.5 per cent increase), while the visitor arrival forecasts from India are expected to increase by 15 per cent per annum over the next ten years and peak at 1,98,800 by 2013.

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