The Property Council welcomed the NSW Government launch today of a new Brand Sydney campaign involving a $1.3 million boost to promote Sydney to interstate visitors but is calling on the Government to set more ambitious tourism targets.
Launched by the Minister for Tourism Matt Brown, the new “Brand Sydney” campaign aligns well with industry calls for a greater focus on marketing Sydney as a key tourism destination.
“Sydney is the key gateway destination to Australia and any effective tourism strategy will need to maximise
travel to Sydney to grow tourism visitation and spending in NSW,” said NSW executive director Ken Morrison.
“It is good to see the Minister injecting new energy into the role of championing the tourism industry in NSW”
“We welcome the renewed focus this sector is receiving from the NSW Government and we’d like to see this taken further by establishing more ambitious targets to drive the industry’s further.”
“Tourism is a major economic driver, it contributes $10.8 billion to the NSW economy, makes up over one tenth of the State’s exports and accounts for 246,000 jobs.”
The NSW Government State Plan sets out a tourism target of an increase of 10 million visitor nights by 2016 over the 2004/05 levels of 135.1 million visitor nights. This target represents an average visitor night growth rate of 0.65% per year which is slightly lower than the annual growth last year.
Tourism contributes more to the States economy than agriculture, forestry and fishing, mining, communication, electricity gas and water supply, personal and other services, cultural and recreation services or government administration and defence industries.
The Property Council’s submission to the O’Neill review into tourism in NSW calls for a more ambitious tourism target to raise the bar on expectations and encourage greater activity and industry involvement.
“Higher tourism targets are required to keep private investors interested in investing in tourism accommodation rather than looking to other asset classes”
“Higher targets are needed so the NSW tourism industry remains competitive with all other industries not just international and interstate tourism industries”
Property Council recommendations to the O’Neill review into tourism in NSW
- Revise the tourism target in the NSW State Plan to match targets for annual visitor and bed nights to a growth rate that is representative of the need to for a sustainable approach to the mature NSW tourism industry.
- Commission a study or make publicly available information that can reliably determine the effect and extent that public funding contributes to the NSW tourism industry’s success and value to the state economy.
- Increase the level of Government funding to the NSW tourism industry. At a minimum the amount of funding should be sufficient to maintain market share with our two largest domestic competitors, the Victorian and Queensland tourism industries
- Greater levels of properly funded marketing led demand management focussed around a strong Sydney brand utilising a regionally integrated Melbourne Gateway style strategy.
- Adoption of a Destination Sydney Board marketing body. The purpose of DSB is to provide a platform to enable the coordinated participation of all tourism industry stakeholders in a single overarching marketing strategy that is responsible for the development and maintenance of a powerful and robust Destination Sydney brand.
- Increase the amount of public funding of the SCVB so the overall level of funding is raised in excess of $8 million annually to allow the SCVB to effective compete with the Melbourne CVB, releasing private sources of funding for marketing and attracting conventions and other business.
- The role and function of the Office of the Coordinator General be made more widely known among private sector investors, particularly investors within the tourism industry whose projects require complex inputs from numerous areas of government.
- Adoption of a clearer whole-of-government approach to tourism through mechanisms and processes which are capable of reliably elevating tourism issues to the attention of senior bureaucrats such as an interagency working group outline in Towards 2020.
Contact:
Ken Morrison, NSW Executive Director on 02 9033 1906 or 0412 233 715
