Rosalky slams NSW Government tourism budget cuts

Tourism Industry Council New South Wales Chairman, Ron Rosalky has fired a firm shot across the bows of the New South Wales Government as a result of their slashing tourism budgets in this week’s State budget, warning that the lack of budget allocated to the tourism sector will have long term repercussions, to the detriment of the industry.

Mr Rosalky said, “The $4.4million cut in the budget allocation to the NSW tourism industry, compared to the 2002-03 budget, will have serious implications on the future of tourism in New South Wales and the clear lack of support for the industry comes at a time when it can least afford to be ignored”.

“Every year for the past four years the overall number of domestic visitors to NSW and domestic visitor nights spent in NSW has dropped,” said Rosalky, adding, “Yesterday’s budget is of serious concern, not only is there not enough money allocated to such a vital industry, but we also have concerns as to how the limited funding is being spent.”

He said, “Tourism in New South Wales employs one in twelve of the NSW workforce and is worth $23 billion to the State’s economy, yet budget expenditure on tourism in NSW is on the decline, contrary to the State budgets of other States”.

“While there were significant spending increases in tourism in the recent State budgets of Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, the NSW budget has condemned this State to yet another year of struggle,” said Rosalky.

He said that contrary to the NSW budget’s stated objective of “sustaining growth of the tourism economy”, the reality that ‘New South Wales tourism numbers are down and are continuing to decrease’ is not news to anyone”.

“This was recently confirmed by a survey conducted by TIC NSW in conjunction with the Hotel Motel and Accommodation Association (HMAA) following the Anzac long weekend and based on the responses of more than 170 hotel, motel and other accommodation operators across NSW for the 2006 Easter/Anzac holiday period, the results showed:-

1. 75% of all hotels, motels and accommodation were less than ¾ occupied, and more than six percent reported being almost empty, at less than 25% occupancy;
2. Over 50% agreed that occupancy rates were remarkably lower than last year over the same period; and
3. Over 50% believe that the overall year has continued to be lower occupancy than the last few years.

Roslaky said, “While other States sign on more major events and are further developing the infrastructure required to host such events, NSW is allocating less and less funding and actually cancelling high profile events”.

“Tourism Industry Council NSW is working actively to improve the business conditions surrounding tourism, but improvement can only be achieved through a collaborative effort and that must include an understanding by the ‘powers that be’ of the importance of the tourism sector – something they clearly do not understand if this current budget is anything to judge by.”

The Mole commetns that this devastating news for the tourism industry in New South Wales comes on the heels of a Tasmanian Government announcment of a massive boost to Tasmanian tourism spending, in the wake of the demise of Spirit III, the island becoming a lead tourism spender.

Mr Rosalky’s comments highlight what is believed to be a cross industry consensus at the lack of interest in and understanding of tourism shown by Premier Iemma’s Government.  

His comments also recognise the failure of Tourism Minister Nori to secure greater levels of tourism funding in Government, in a tourism market environment of seriously declining domestic tourism, the decline being not only domestically but also as recently reported in TravelMole, the massive decline from Japan also being led by New South Wales.

Report by The Mole