We’re not sure which planet Tourism Australia boss Andrew McEvoy is living on right now.
Either that or he was badly misquoted by an online travel website yesterday.
McEvoy, seeing off the inaugural Qantas flight to Dallas, rejected claims that the recent Oprah Winfrey shows had failed to lift visitation from the US.
“More than 61 percent of US citizens are actively planning a trip down under as a result of Oprah,†he was quoted as saying.
Now, 61 percent of 308.7 million US citizens (at the last count) equates to something like 184 million Americans who, McEvoy says, are ready to call their travel agents and book a visit Down Under.
The so-called Oprah effect has yet to materialize. There were 46,400 visitors to Australia from the United States during February 2011 bringing the total for the first two months of the year to 83,600, a decrease of one per cent relative to the same period of the previous year.
It’s too early to write off Oprah’s visit as a failure, but all the time the Aussie dollar remains high against its US counterpart, and economic conditions in the US remain on life support, the prospects for a US visitor-led revival for tourism in Australia remains – at best – remote
There is also the worry – amplified by Crown Ltd majority owner James Packer – that there is too much tired product in Australia compared to rival destinations, most notably Singapore and Macau.
According to Australia’s highest-profile billionaire, many destinations in Queensland have become tired and old, especially the resorts developed in the 1970s and 1980s.
Not even Oprah can change that.
