Partnership needed to build up tourism

Press, 26 June 1987, Page 23

Partnership needed to build up tourism

PA Brisbane The head of the Queensland tourism industry, Sir Frank Moore, has called on Australia and New Zealand to work together with Island nations to build a South Pacific tourism region. Sir Frank, chairman of the Queensland Tourist and Travel Corporation, said co-operation was needed to compete for the lucrative northern hemisphere market. “I believe that we, as 15 million Australians and three million New Zealanders, are very small cheese in the world,” he told a meeting of the New Zealand-Queensland Connection in Brisbane.

“We are surrounded by a number of small Island

nations who between them total about two million people.

“That’s the whole of the South Pacific region.”

Sir Frank said the Australian states and New Zealand “should extend a hand of partnership to build a strong tourism industry in the region. “We should not be fighting over whether Queensland, New South Wales or Victoria got the business.

“We should think of that enormous market in the Northern Hemisphere which is ours if we learn to build and share together.” Europeans coming to the Antipodes wanted a total South Pacific experience, he said. “If you say to Australians or New Zealanders that they could go only to London and not to Rome and Paris, well of course it’s stupid. “Similarly, when Europeans come here, they don’t just want a Queensland, or a Barrier Reef or an Australian experience — they want a South Pacific experience.” Culture should play a major part in selling the region.

“Most of the great tourist destinations are built on their culture,” Sir Frank said.

“You don’t go to Britain to see the rain forests — you go for the culture and the history. “We have a great diversity in the South Pacific, but we also have an underlying theme.” Development of a regional industry should be done bv Private enterprise, Sir Frank said. “We don’t want the Government to do it, because it is too costly and run by bureaucrats who usually make a mess of it.”

He also said it was important to take a longterm view of tourism in the region — and not look for the “quick fix.”

. “We are not in the business of building an industry based on ‘flavour of the month’, because at

the end of the month you have got nothing,” he said.

“Somewhere else is the flavour of the month and you are back where you were before.

“We don’t need cheap, pretty ideas. We need people who are looking to create a product that is renewable for a very long time.” Another factor was insuring that travel agents in the markets targeted were part of the development, Sir Frank said.

“We have to look at the marketing sensibly. We have to look at helping travel agents make their bottom line thicker and help them be participants in what we are doing.”