Interview with John O’Neill, Executive Director and General Manager, TNSW

The Mole: Thank you John for taking the time to allow us to interview you in response to the recent opinion and point of view published in TravelMole regarding the rather poor performance by New South Wales in the National Tourism Awards.

JO: I welcome the opportunity and I’d also like to take you through the objectives of Tourism NSW because I think it’s important that the trade understands what we are about and what we are trying to achieve.

Our vision is that Tourism NSW will be globally recognized for shaping and promoting unforgettable NSW destinations ands experiences and our mission is that Tourism NSW will promote and support the development of NSW destinations.

We’ll achieve this mission by, marketing new destinations, working with and providing advice to industry, government agencies and other key stakeholders about the development of sustainable destinations.

We have a three year strategic plan with a number of key objectives including, building awareness of NSW destinations, developing private and public sector partnerships and sharing our knowledge and expertise.

We are trying to create an environment where our people are enthused and energetic about working with the Brand, and realize that they are ultimately providing expert consulting services to the industry at large.

The Mole: So, how does all that translate into something really tangible?

JO: When I got here we had about fifteen different brand campaigns across the State, you know, Big Sky Country, Explorer Country etc etc, none of which meant anything at all to the consumer,  They all featured in the Good Weekend magazine at Easter time, but achieved very little.

Frankly our money was being very badly spent.

What we’ve done is look at the research and realise that the State is too big to be marketed as a single entity. As a result, we’ve looked at it and broken it down into six different umbrella marketing zones.

There’s Sydney, the North Coast and the South Coast, the High Country, the Outback and then one called the Heart of the Country, which is west of the Divide and east of the Outback.

We spent $4 million to create and launch these marketing campaigns last February and we think it’s much more intuitive for consumers and the results have demonstrated that.

Our marketing architecture is that the State is the sum of its parts, and those are the six parts that best offer a coherent experience to the consumer.

The Mole: The Government recently announced some changes to the structure involving Tourism NSW. How does that affect you?

JO: We are now aligned with the Department of State and Regional Development.  The Minister is also now the Assistant Minister for State Development, with the Minister for State Development now the Premier.

So, we’ve become a part of an Economic Development cluster, which recognizes that Tourism is a $23 billion subset of the State economy that employs a quarter of a million people – so we’re pleased about that.

The Mole: I think we all appreciate the work going on, but the question remains, why was NSW not more successful at the recent National Awards?  Is there something fundamentally wrong with the way NSW is marketed?

JO: The Awards, in my view, need reform.

In 2004 when I was the Chair of the Australian Standing Committee on Tourism, I started that process by getting the agreement of all the States and the Federal Government to hand the awards back to industry.

It seemed to me counter – intuitive that for instance public sector agencies were up against private sector businesses.  So, you could have a museum in Canberra win over Bridgeclimb, and that seemed to me not to make much sense.

It’s also true that industry itself has traditionally not encouraged participation from within its ranks.

The Restaurant and Caterers association for instance actively tell their members not to participate in the State and National Tourism Awards. The Australian Hotels Association shares similar views.

My view is the people who participate in the awards are generally really good businesses that are trying to get ahead and certainly deserve commendation, but to position the awards as the Academy Awards or the best of the best, just defies the reality of the complexity of the structure, the onerousness of the submission process.

Other States agreed two years ago so they will not see it as sour grapes – we are all grown ups.

These Awards are too often all about the way you present a business plan, not about the customer experience that people have.

There are also too many awards. 

The Mole: So what should happen to the Awards?

JO: I think this is a question for the industry. I think the AHA, the Restaurant and Caterers Association, and the National Tourism Alliance need to get together and decide what they want, how can we actually crack this nut?

The Mole: But isn’t that a role for Tourism NSW?  Shouldn’t you be driving that?

JO: Our role has been to say we will support and celebrate excellence in this State? We will make sure that we will provide support to the industry in participating in awards.

It is not goal of TNSW to win more awards – we want to win awards for our work e.g. our recent PATA Award.

We don’t like the fact that in the recent awards people have taken a view that because we only won one award, NSW doesn’t have great product.

But that’s not because we haven’t been working with people in the industry. We provided workshops etc, but if the industry itself doesn’t see a value in participating, I can’t make them do it.

I think that the submission process should be shorter – I’d rather six pages than sixty.

I also think there should be some sort of self assessment process for people to assess their own business plan.  The NTA will tell you this, they are saying that everyone knows the system is faulty.

Now none of this takes away from the fact that everyone who won an award is not a worthy winner. I don’t want to rain on their parade at all.

I’m very proud of the NSW businesses that have taken part and have won awards, but the system needs repair.

The Mole: Do the plethora of awards out there really mean anything? Aren’t they just a marketing gimmick for self promotion by industry sub sectors?

JO: I think everyone likes to be recognized and I think they can have value.

What you have to be careful about is devaluing the currency. Hence my argument for revising the Awards.

The reality is that as soon as you have an award, people are going to use it as a marketing tool, so therefore we need to ensure that there is a real customer experience basis to it.

The Mole: Not withstanding all of that, you were at the Awards. What were your feelings as NSW was bypassed over and over on the night?

JO: Well, I understand how the system works, so I was neither positive nor negative. It’s good for the industry to celebrate, so my mindset is it’s a night of celebration for the whole industry, not just NSW.

The Mole: Another comment we hear frequently is that Tourism NSW is very Sydney oriented. Do you think you have an issue with Regional tourism bodies?

JO: We put $2 million into basically administrative footprints across the State, and each of those 15 regional bodies gets in excess of $100K a year.

One of the things that wasn’t happening is that it wasn’t really written into the agreements with those bodies that it would be acknowledged or celebrated.

To me, it’s a very significant investment for us in facilitating tourism networks and activity on the ground, so I think we need to be more closely associated with that role.

We have huge engagement with the regions these days.  Our people are in regional market places all the time and our marketing people are on the road.

The Mole: But there is still the perception that it’s still Sydney people coming and telling us what to do. Also, the feeling is they are under funded, perhaps not by you, but still short of funds to effectively market their regions.

JO: Well, they’re under funded if they want to try and run a Brand or TV campaign, but they have the tools from what we provide to leverage off the marketing we run and for them do business networking and leveraging, which is what they should be doing.

Our challenge, which we’re working through, is how do we each add value to the other?

I grew up in Armidale, I worked on country newspapers, I know the bush extremely well, and I would spend a lot of my time in the bush.   I think that perception you describe is what the business may have been three or four years ago, not what it is today.

I guess what we have to do is build better stakeholder communication networks, but all of these things take time.  

One of the things I’m looking forward to as part of our new alignment with State Development is that they have offices and offices around the State, and we’ll be looking at how to best utilize those people and locations.

I’m genuinely interested in how we can assist the regions. We are a substitute industry for many of the jobs around the State that are in decline.

2 in 5 jobs are in tourism in regional NSW

The jobs that you get from Tourism, most of them won’t be outsourced, they’ll be real jobs for young people in regional communities, so we are cognizant of the challenges and committed to making this work.

The Mole: Will Tourism receive any of Premier Iemma’s allocation of $13m funding boost to the Department of State and Regional Development.     

JO: No and it is a discrete investment in the core funding of State and Regional Development.

The Mole: Will tourism have a seat on the Premier’s “business cabinet” made up of leading executives to look at investment issues

JO: I don’t know.  Maurice Newman, The Chairman of TNSW is also the Chairman of the Stock Exchange and Les Cassar, the Deputy Chairman is the Chairman of TTF, so along with the other Board members this gives TNSW huge credibility and skills.

The Mole: Aren’t your Board pretty Sydney centric though?

JO:  Our Board members are there for their skills and expertise not geographic location.

The Mole: Our contributor concluded from their research that perhaps a serious look should be taken  at Tourism New South Wales’ relevance to the industry in general in NSW and in particular regional NSW, which as a result of our contributor’s research appeared to cast some doubt on the relevance of TNSW – this was a uniform and consistent comment that came from a range of individuals in Local and State Government, the private sector and even from within your own organisation.  What is your response to this view?

JO: For people to have faith we need to perform consistently and we have not done so in the past.  We need to demonstrate our credibility to the industry and in particular RTO’s and local government.  We will  provide an overarching umbrella to work under.

The Mole: Is there a final message from Tourism NSW to the Trade?

JO: I think the message is we’re committed, we’re engaged, we’re involved. We’re happy to listen and we intend to be very consistent.

The Mole: On a different note, what is your opinion of the new Tourism Australia “where the bloody hell are you” ads?

JO: Look, personally I quite like them.  I think the content is great.  I don’t want to comment on the tag line, that’s for other people.

What really matters ultimately is not what I or any other marketer thinks, it’s what happens in the target markets, and they appear to have done a very thorough job of concept research, and frankly, by default therefore, there is an admission that the previous campaign was a failure.

But I think we all hope that this one will work and work well.

The Mole: Thank you John and we look forward to speaking with you again in the near future.

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