On 15 December 2009, the Hon Martin Ferguson AM MP, Minister for Tourism, released the National Long Tourism Strategy (Strategy).

The Strategy, which has been endorsed by all state and territory governments, provides a national policy framework for ensuring Australia's tourism industry is sustainable and fulfils its economic potential. The Strategy is designed to assist the Federal Government to maximise the net economic benefit of the tourism industry to the Australian economy.

According to the Strategy, the tourism industry contributed over $40 billion to Australia's GDP in 2007/08, directly employed around half a million people and is Australia's largest services export with export earnings exceeding $23 billion. However, Australia's share of global tourism has been in decline for more than a decade. The Jackson Report identified a 14 per cent reduction in Australia's global share of tourism expenditure between 1995 and 2008, although Australian tourism exports grew by 6 per cent during 2008-09, contrary to international trends.

The Strategy relies primarily on the reinvigoration and leadership of the Tourism Ministers' Council (TMC) to achieve the strategic objectives. Although the Strategy is brief and does not provide detailed information about how the Federal Government will achieve policy goals, it recommends the following actions:

  • broaden and strengthen Tourism Australia's capacity and functions to incorporate industry development and online distribution, while retaining its primary focus on international marketing and enhancing its strategic domestic marketing role
  • reinvigorate the TMC to enable stronger participation from state and territory governments and industry, and oversee implementation of national tourism priorities
  • establish a new governance structure for research and development to drive a national tourism research agenda, and advance high quality research that informs industry and policy development
  • produce an annual state of the industry report, providing a quantitative and qualitative assessment of current industry performance, challenges and trends
  • the TMC to appoint an investment and regulatory reform working group, including industry, and state and territory stakeholders, to implement and progress the tourism regulatory reform priorities
  • the TMC to work with Service Skills Australia, to implement the Tourism and Hospitality Workforce Development Strategy
  • through the TMC, continue to deliver the actions of the Climate Change Taskforce to improve industry understanding of the impact of climate change, and to prepare the Australian tourism industry for a carbon-constrained future
  • the TMC to endorse and implement the National Tourism Accreditation Framework and the Tourism Quality Council as the mechanisms to recognise Australia's quality tourism products and services
  • review the capacity of current Indigenous development programs to develop Indigenous tourism products, including an annual review of existing Indigenous tourism products and services and publication of the National Indigenous Tourism Product Manual through Australia.com, and
  • the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism and Tourism Australia, to work with stakeholders to publish a comprehensive state of the industry report to be delivered to the TMC in 2010 and distributed widely throughout the industry.

The TMC is leading the implementation of the Strategy and has already developed and endorsed a detailed Work Plan which outlines the initial work to be done to roll out the Strategy.

The Strategy is available here(253 KB pdf).

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