Australia's most famous billionaire, James Packer, has said that Australia's tourism bodies, which receive around $500 million in Government funding, should be more accountable and have measurable benchmarks.

As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, Mr Packer also stated that Australia is missing the mark in terms of its advertising campaigns with the continued imagery of the outback, and are falling behind other parts of the world in the product we deliver.

"We need to get more sophisticated than this if we want to attract middle-class Asian tourists," he said."It's one thing if you want backpackers on $50 a day, but the market Australia should be aiming for is the affluent and rising middle-class Asian market. That is who Australia needs to be aiming for because we are too far from Europe and too far from America."

Mr Packer also commented on the Great Barrier Reef which sees around 2 million visitors annually.

"The experience for a well travelled tourist is you arrive in Cairns, where the beach is unfortunately a mud flat, you go out to the reef on a hydrofoil that looks like it needs some money spent on it, you dive into the water and where the pontoon is located the reef looks like it is dying. You come back up and you are meant to say, 'Isn't this amazing'. It could be an amazing, world-class experience, but we need to get our act together.''

Head of Tourism Tropical North Queensland, Rob Giason, hit back at Mr Packer's comments on outdated infrastructure.

“It’s good to see a businessman of Mr Packer’s stature enter the debate about the need for public funding for tourism marketing.  It may be time for him to bring his superyacht to Cairns to see one of Australia’s top facilities for superyachts and other upgrades to tourism infrastructure since he was last here.”

Tourism Australia boss Andrew McEvoy also disputed Mr Packer's views.

"People are still  travelling to Australia at record levels, with 5.9 million visitors in 2010, up 5.4 per cent on 2009.

"Australia continues to have high appeal and is a desirable place to visit - ranking second overall in the FutureBrand study of country brands in 2010.

“The roll out of our global brand campaign, There’s Nothing Like Australia, is proving very successful across Asia, including China where 97 per cent of a sample of people who have recently seen the campaign confirmed they had started researching a trip to Australia.

“As we’ve highlighted in our recently released 2010 Tourism Industry Potential report, it is more than just the visitor numbers that we want to grow. Looking ahead to 2020, we’re very focused on growing the economic contribution that Asian and other international visitors deliver to the Australian economy.”

“As part of its long term tourism vision, Tourism Australia has identified a number of markets in Asia, which will help drive the future growth of the Australian tourism industry. It is anticipated that China alone will generate up to $9 billion in total tourism expenditure by 2020.”

Tourism Australia spokesperson Leo Seaton said that measuring the success of a campaign takes longer in the travel industry than for most other products.

"The decision-making process of selling a destination is a lot longer than for other commodities – and there are many more opportunities for people who we are ‘wooing’ to be syphoned off to another destination during our courtship process.

"Unlike other industries where you can put a TV ad up and expect sales to reflect efforts – we need to measure the softer marketing indicators which precede the inevitable conversion."