by Andrew McEvoy
Managing Director Tourism Australia


Tourism Australia has announced some structural change to align itself to the 2020 Tourism Industry Potential launched last November at the Directions Conference in Canberra.

The 2020 Industry Potential looks at a range of scenarios for growth of the tourism industry over the next decade. The best possible scenario would see the industry double the value of overnight travel to and through Australia.

With this in mind, Tourism Australia is lining its resources up to play the strongest role possible in achieving those targets.

The changes will help TA take a very simple approach to creating demand for the Australian tourism product, direct more money into talking to consumers, improving our capability in digital marketing and distribution, and forming stronger partnerships with the States and Territories, airlines, international distribution and Australian industry.

It will also allow us to play a role in helping find new investment in Australian tourism infrastructure.

While I would not expect each of you in the industry to know and understand the structure and workings of Tourism Australia some of the key changes include:

Our Consumer Marketing team will continue to be headed by Nick Baker and research will become a part of his group. That is to ensure we have the strongest possible understanding of the consumer we need to target and create the right messages to reach them. There will be a real focus on continuing to build our capability in the area of digital marketing and social advocacy.

Our International Operations, currently broken down into East and West, will be renamed Marketing Operations and be headed by Frances Anne Keeler. Business Events will also report through this area to bring this team closer to the corporate end-users they are trying to influence to bring meetings and incentives to Australia.

The Operations team's job will be to bring to life the marketing created by Nick and his team in a way that works locally in markets around the world.

Our Industry Development team will come up onto executive (formerly reporting into marketing) and be named Destination Development. We will add some expertise in investment attraction while continuing to run our trade events, work to bring Indigenous tourism operators to market and partner with Parks Australia on the National Landscapes initiative.

There will also be some changes in the areas of Corporate Services, Strategy and Corporate Affairs designed to make logical sense and align our structure to the 2020 strategy.

Campaigns are running in all key markets, we are gearing for the Australian Tourism Exchange in Sydney from April 2-8; have worked hard to capitalise on the Oprah Winfrey Show (good early results) and will be working closely with Anthony Hayes and Tourism Queensland on helping see the industry up there bounce back after the recent flood and cyclone damage and the perceptions this has created in Australia and overseas.