Many tourism operators let Australia’s natural beauty do the work for them. Photo: Glenn Hunt
When did you last feel pampered on an Australian holiday? That is, regardless of price, you felt a tourism operator went out of their way to make your holiday feel special. It might have been friendly hotel staff, an excellent waiter, or a business owner who implied nothing was too much trouble.
I know such tourism enterprises exist. The trouble is, too many slack operators drag others down. They have little regard for repeat business. Get as much as they can from tourists on their first and last visit, seems to be the mantra.
They let Australia’s natural beauty do too much of the work for them and seem lazy compared to overseas tourism operators that are far more professional.
What’s your view?
Are standards in Australia’s tourism industry falling?
• How do our tourism standards compare to those overseas?
• Have you encountered slack, overpriced tourism joints?
• What are the real problems in Australia’s tourism industry?
• Have the federal and state governments done enough to help the industry?
I feel sorry for passionate tourism operators who lose repeat business because terrible operators in their tourism “ecosystem” turn a potentially great Australian holiday into a good or average one.
Consider my recent family holiday to the Whitsundays. The accommodation was excellent: attentive staff, great service and zero stress. But the restaurant in town took an hour to serve meals, they did not arrive at the same time, and the waiter could not remember the orders.
The ice-cream man in the main street snapped at a nice old Italian woman who did not realise a queue had formed, and an island resort forced patrons to line up for 30 minutes on a hot day for an awful lunch. Not once were we asked where we hailed from, how our holiday was going or had a tourism attraction recommended.
It’s hard to feel sorry for the tourism industry when standards are this poor.
Yes, I’m nit-picking, but it’s a similar story in far too many Australian tourist destinations, where good operators are let down by poor ones, and innovation is lacking.
What would an American tourist think of such patchy service? I still had a good holiday, but not so good that I would rush to return. I thought, “Next year, I’ll spend the same amount on an overseas holiday that feels like a real holiday, rather than just staying in another town.”
To be fair, Australia’s tourism industry is under intense pressure. The global financial crisis saw more international travellers stay home, and our high dollar and cheap airfare packages encourage record numbers of Australians to travel overseas. Heavy discounting has forced some tourism operators to cut costs to maintain profit margins. All too often, service is the first casualty.
The short-term outlook for tourism is poor. “Australia will continue to lose its share of the global international traveller market as many new destinations emerge,” says business forecaster IBISWorld in its latest tourism industry report. IBIS says an equivalent of 30.2 per cent of Australia’s population takes an overseas trip each year and forecasts this to rise to 50 per cent by 2016-17. That’s a great opportunity in itself for nimble entrepreneurs who can cash in on Australia’s overseas travel boom.
Thank goodness many more Chinese tourists this decade will help offset less domestic travel in Australia.
Even so, it will be a terrible shame if more tourist operators give up on the domestic market as they chase Asian tourists. Our tourism industry has too much of a natural competitive advantage – the country’s vast beauty – to lose share to other destinations.
I’m no tourism expert, but I’ve seen too many industries respond poorly to structural and cyclical threats (retail is an example). The main solution has been to cut costs, damage product quality and wreck brands. Company morale falls and staff only turn up for the pay cheque. Decades of hard work are lost in a few years as even loyal customers start to give up on the product. Innovation and great leadership are lacking.
I wondered why tourism operators in my holiday town did not work closer together and find a way to compete and collaborate at the same time by cross-promoting attractions. I wish more tourist towns adopted a service code of ethics for tourism operators and enforced it. Maybe more stringent accreditation for tourist operators is needed. And I wonder if the quality of customer experiences in Australian tourism are audited enough and benchmarked against other countries.
I wasn’t asked once about the quality of my holiday or any product or service bought.
As an observer outside the tourism industry, it seems so much money is spent (and often wasted) on attracting tourists to Australia, and not enough on improving their travel experience and encouraging repeat business. Do enough international travellers to Australia rave about their experience upon returning home? What about domestic travellers?
A relative who recently returned from Hawaii gushed about the experience and customer service (right or wrong, tipping makes a big difference.) I reckon Far North Queensland has Hawaii covered for natural beauty, but with too much patchy service and standards in Australian tourism, it’s getting harder to make the case to holiday locally – at least for big trips.
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