Rosalky gives the NSW tourism industry a wake up call

Ron Rosalky, the Chairman of New South Wales’ Tourism Industry Council, NSW’s peak state body for tourism, gave New South Wales’ public and private sector tourism industry something to think about today, telling them to wake up to the continuing decline of tourism figures in NSW.

In calling on the both sectors to join forces and create new strategies to halt the continuing and worrying decline in domestic tourism numbers, he said “Every year for the past four years the number of domestic visitors to NSW and domestic visitor nights spent in NSW has dropped, and the trend is continuing to go south.”  

Mr Rosalky was speaking in response to the latest National Visitor Survey for 2005 and he warned that the continuing downward spiral in NSW would eventually lead to hospitality and tourism industry job losses across the State.

The National Visitor Survey results published recently show that domestic tourism numbers decreased nationally by 6% last year compared to 2004 and that NSW performed worse than the national average, experiencing a drop in both visitor numbers and in its share of the market.   There were also 7% per cent fewer overnight trips and eight per cent less visitor nights than in 2004.

Mr Rosalky pointed out that there were many ways in which NSW is under-performing, including: –

Leisure spending in NSW – down 5%

Visitor trips to NSW – down 7%

Visitor nights in NSW – down 9%

Interstate visitors – down 9%

Intrastate visitors – down 2%

The Mole spoke with Mr Rosalky and he said, “We have been watching the NVS results for a few quarters and what concerns us is the accelerating rate of decline and unless we take notice now we will be in serious trouble,” adding, “We have to generate interest in the public and private sectors working together to optimise the money being spent on marketing tourism”. 

“There is a lot more money being spent than just that by Tourism New South Wales”.  “I estimate that local government in NSW spends $60m on tourism promotion annually, in addition to the $40m spent by TNSW, which is in addition to that spent by airlines, hotels, attractions, etc, etc,” 

“It is therefore possible that in the region of $200m is being spent every year in NSW on tourism promotion, but it is not being spent in a coordinated manner or harnessed to create maximum benefit, return on investment and business”.   “We need to harness and optimise this expenditure and coordinate campaigns.”

Mr Rosalky said, “It depends on much more than TNSW doing it but everyone working together and the Local, State and National Tourism Awards should be a critical part of any operators marketing for the year.

“We also need an economic model that has some credibility to measure the economic benefit of tourism, so that if you spend $xm, what do you get back?”  Until we have that information, we are all working in the dark.”

When asked about the role of the Local and State Awards, their ownership and who should be driving them Mr Rosalky replied, “Tourism New South Wales and the Tourism Council are co owners of the awards and we need to figure out ways of working on this”.

“Many changes are required, including simplifying the process, helping people complete their entries, the introduction of standardised formats across national, state and local awards, so that entrants only have to worry about one submission”.

The Mole also spoke with John O’Neill, Executive Director and General Manager of Tourism New South Wales who was interviewed recently by The Mole (to read the interview, please click on http://www.travelmole.com/stories/107741.php?news_cat=&pagename=searchresult) during which he was less than complementary about the awards system and did not really see a future awards role for TNSW , saying that they had handed the awards over to the industry.

Mr O’Neill said with regard to Mr Rosalky’s comments, “Ron is right that it is a challenge to create as close an alignment as possible with the industry to maximise the investment that TNSW has made in tourism marketing”.

He added, “I would say to Ron though that the sky is not falling in and the overall share of visitors for NSW from the domestic market is 34.1% this year, marginally down from 34.5% last year”.  “In terms of visitor nights it was 30% last year to 29.9% this year so its not falling in”.  It is clear that we are actually holding share in a declining national market”.

Regarding coordinating tourism spend across the public and private sectors, Mr O’Neill said “We have to remember that local government often includes spend on visitor servicing in their marketing budgets, with a great deal of the investment by local government being spent in market rather than in getting people in, distorting the picture somewhat.”   

He added, “We are doing what we can to more effectively align all activities related to tourism promotion, including organising the 2^nd local government on tourism conference and we are addressing all of the NSW Mayors in June to help explain the consumer decision making cycle and all that tourism marketing entails – we are doing what Ron says but it is not easy across over 160 local government areas!

“The National Tourism Alliance is also looking at the awards and met last week to discuss simplifying the awards process, reducing the questions in the application form down to five, in addition to an increasing focus on customer experience”.

Report by The Mole

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