Tourism Awards – a comment

While Queensland, Victoria and Western Australian tourism industry leaders left the Australian Tourism Awards on the Gold Coast on Friday evening celebrating their recognition as the clear tourism winners and leaders in the industry in Australia, their New South colleagues must have left feeling very much the loser and certainly rather embarrassed!

The three top winning tourism states snagged eighteen of the twenty six awards between them (70% of the tally), broken down into an even six each, (26% of the tally each), while New South Wales received only one award, a rather embarrassing 3% of the tally!  One of the smaller States and Territories in Australia, Tasmania received two awards – congratulations Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and Tassie from The Mole!

Congratulations also from The Mole to the CCIA NSW for saving NSW from a total trouncing by winning NSW’s only award for their excellent NSW Camping and Caravan Holiday Guide 2005 – a very well deserved award indeed.

The majority of the awards were related to infrastructure and marketing and NSW failed to make the winners podium in all categories, except the one sole award above.

So, The Mole asks what is the problem in NSW?   Why does NSW appear to have fallen so far behind? 

The Mole and surely the industry would hope that some serious questions are being asked on Monday morning in Government offices in NSW, from that of Minister Nori’s downwards to ensure that there is not a repeat performance next year. 

Premier Iemma said last week that The Department of State Development and Regional Development will be expanded to include the Ministry for Science and Medical Research and the Tourism Ministry, but he did not indicate, when this restructuring would take place or what structure would actually be put in place.

The Mole suggests that perhaps Premier Iemma should look seriously at Tourism New South Wales’ relevance to the industry in general in NSW and in particular regional NSW, which as a result of the Mole’s ears being pretty close to the ground is virtually and totally irrelevant.

Tourism in NSW needs to be led by an organisation not bound by bureaucracy and process as currently, but by leaders and an organisation that recognises the industry’s real economic value.

Premier Iemma also announced that The Department of State and Regional Development will receive a $13 million funding boost and that he will be advised on investment issues by a new “business cabinet” made up of leading executives.

The Mole hopes that the position of tourism will be recognised in the allocation of these funds, with appropriate and immediate allocations being made to stimulate investment, development and professionalism in the tourism industry.

NSW may have the icon destination but it appears that is all it has!

The Mole