McEvoy will discuss TA’s There’s Nothing Like Australia campaign and its relevance to the youth market, while Wheeler’s closing address will focus on the future of adventure travel and Lonely Planet’s role in it following BBC Worldwide taking a 75 per cent stake in the company in 2007.

This year’s event takes place on November 4 at Dockside, Cockle Bay Wharf, Darling Harbour. The Golden Backpack Awards Dinner follows at Star City Casino, Pyrmont.

Further program details will be released in the coming weeks. For more information and to book, e-mail denise@focalattractions.com.au.

This year, voters will be directed to a web page to enter their votes, then sent an e-mail which they will have to respond to before their votes are counted. Each e-mail address will only be accepted once.

The web page will be heavily promoted via TNT Magazine and tntdownunder.com. Backpacker businesses are also encouraged to link to it from their own websites.

Run in association with TNT Magazine and Thumbrella, the Golden Backpacks are the only consumer-voted awards for Australia and New Zealand’s independent travel industry. Voting closes on September 24 and the winners will be announced at a gala dinner at Sydney’s Star City Casino on November 4.

For more information about the Golden Backpack Awards Dinner and to book, e-mail denise@focalattractions.com.au.

Speakers at the two-day conference on June 29 and 30 included Lonely Planet Market Representative Cai JingHui who said over 25 per cent of hostel and hotel bookings on the publisher’s website are for Asian destinations.

CEO of Hostelworld.com Feargal Mooney added Hostelworld figures supported the Lonely Planet statistics with Asia being the fastest growing destination for inbound travellers for the booking engine with bookings growth of over 30% in 2009.

Other speakers included CEO & Founder of Go2eu.com Xiao Yi, General Manager of TripAdvisor’s official site in China, Daodao.com and Hostelworld’s Business Development Manager for Asia Lorraine O’Reilly.

Hopper is taking a break before deciding on his next move. He told Thumbrella he would consider an interstate move but said he has “unfinished business” in Perth.

He added: “I would dearly love to run my own venue with financial support from an investment group, so I can expand on what I have developed in recent years. I am extremely proud of what I and my team of staff have achieved over the last four-and-a-half years and life won’t be the same not walking into The Hat each morning.”

One leading industry figure in WA said: “We all wish Hopper well – he’s a top operator and deserves every award he has won.”

Jackson said the product is particularly useful for business travellers on an extended marketing trip around Europe.

He added: “My Europe Base allows you to spend weekends and either Monday or Friday catching up on the laptop, then have four days to go on the road or rails (or Ryanair) seeing agents. This would mean four nights in the base and just three nights away in hotels.”

Rates start from A$200 per week from January to March. Big bags and brochure boxes can be left behind while car hire can be organised around trips away.

Jackson left ATA when the company was bought by TUI Travel in 2009.

For more information, visit www.myeuropebase.com.

The warning comes after the latest attack on a female Welsh backpacker 10 days ago.

The owner of the hostel she was staying at told Sunraysia Daily the woman felt unsafe and too scared to stay in Mildura, adding: “You can work hard to promote the area, but those things happen so quickly and can tarnish it.”

Mildura Rural City Council Mayor Glenn Milne said: “The police have made a sensible suggestion, Don’t walk by yourself, especially at two or three in the morning‚ not just in Mildura, anywhere.”

The report said the differential between international visitors coming to Australia and Australians travelling overseas is forecast to be 1.2 million in 2010.

Executive director of the TTF Brett Gale told delegates at last week’s Tourism Futures Conference in Brisbane the strong Australian dollar was a contributory factor. He urged the industry to focus on emerging markets and make tourism development easier.

Gale added: “We need to cut through the red tape and regulation and make it easier to come up with new tourism product, whether it is allowing eco-sensitive development in our natural landscapes or new hotels in our cities. The red tape gets in the way and we can’t offer things that overseas visitors want.”

Meanwhile, Access Economics director Chris Richardson said a strong dollar would not necessarily hurt inbound tourism numbers in the long term as people become more prosperous in emerging economies. However, he warned Australia’s share of that new business would be determined by exchange rates.

“You can have brilliant marketing campaigns and all the rest of it, but the Australian dollar rules ‘the dollars’ as far as travellers are concerned,” he said.

CEO Robert Thomas said the Greyhound Travel Base Packages were the result of discussions at the Australian Tourism Exchange in June.

Packages from Sydney or Melbourne to Cairns include 10 nights accommodation in Base Hostels located along the east coast, with passengers able to start their journey in any of the three cities.

The 3,000 and 10,000km packages allow passengers to travel anywhere on the Greyhound Australia network within 365 days.

Thomas added: “When the Kilometre Pass is combined with the Base accommodation option, it creates the ultimate flexible travelling pass. In addition, passengers can exchange kilometres for any of the 250-plus Greyhound Adventures tours and experiences such as camping on Fraser Island, sailing on the Great Barrier Reef or surf camps in Byron Bay.”

Prices for the four packages lead in at A$660. For more information, visit greyhound.com.au or call 1300 473 946.

The line-up of acts includes Butterfingers, Dirty Laundry, DJ Sam La More and MC Shureshock.

AJ Hackett introduced bungy jumping to the world in 1987 when he dodged tight security to jump off the Eiffel Tower in Paris wearing a tuxedo and a rubber cord tied to his feet.

Hackett described the 110-metre jump, which gained him global notoriety, as “one small step for a man, a bloody great leap for the adventure tourism industry”.

Today, AJ Hackett International has permanent, purpose-built bungy sites in Bali, Germany, France, Macau and New Zealand while more than 350,000 people have taken the plunge from its Cairns hub.

The Cairns Post reported a reader had called to complain that the word “mother******” was painted on a vehicle at the Wicked Campers office, while others claimed to have seen a Wicked vehicle being driven around with a slogan telling women to “shut up and open their legs”.

Wicked Campers owner John Webb told the Post he had fired a graffiti artist who was painting offensive slogans on his vehicles.

“That’s terrible,” he said. “There’s no way in the world I’d allow that on a van. Some of the offensive stuff is okay but not all of it. No f-words and nothing degrading to women is allowed.”

Webb added the company had cleaned up its image recently, with new vehicles painted with indigenous art work. It is also conducting an audit of slogans painted on its vans.

The Adventure Fraser Coast campaign will involve online and brochure components and primarily target the backpacker market through distribution throughout Queensland and interstate.

Upon launching the marketing activity last week, Fraser Coast South Burnett Tourism general manager Damien Massingham said the campaign aimed to encourage backpackers and other visitors to stay longer in the region.

“The backpacker market is one of the region’s fastest growing markets and we need to capitalise on this,” he said.

To visit the website, click here.

In a letter to a creditor, founder Nicholas Adams said business had declined in the last 12 months, with the company selling assets to stay afloat. The letter added there was no money left to pay outstanding debts.

Boomerang Cars was the trading name for Cars of Distinction Pty Ltd.

Adams was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.

What started as an academic project has evolved into a fully functioning website, explore.travellr.com, where users enter a search term and are served relevant messages from Twitter, pictures from Flickr and destination information and advice from Travellr.com and worldnomads.com.

Travellr.com’s Ian Cumming told Tnooz.com: “The project lets students learn skills in project management, web development, teamwork and programming. It also provides them with the ability to learn about the travel industry, so they can further their studies in that field. This is important because it helps foster skills in travel technology for our industry.”

The students are all in their third year of an IT course. Cumming said the group is looking for other providers to get involved with their feeds.

Digital revenues grew by more than one third and now account for 22 per cent of the total, up from nine per cent in 2007 when BBC Worldwide bought into the brand. Web traffic was also up 17 per cent.

According to Travolution, Lonely Planet has benefited from being a launch customer for the iPad – its “1000 Ultimate Experiences” was the most popular app on the iPad app store in June – and the fact it offered stranded travellers “free and discounted” city guides during the ash cloud crisis, resulting in more than three million downloads.

Sales were up to £51.4m from £43m last year, although traditional guide book revenues fell 25 per cent, in line with the overall market. The main markets for the guide book business are the UK, US and Australia.

The figures appeared in the BBC Annual Report. BBC Worldwide paid £89.9 million for a 75 per cent stake in Lonely Planet in October 2007.

Jucy CEO Tim Alpe said the hotel business will operate a pay-as-you-go model, with guests only paying for services they use.

He added: “We don’t want to lumber people with charges for services they’re not using – if they don’t want their room cleaned or serviced they shouldn’t be paying for it. Guests can opt for wireless connections or late checkouts, but they get to make the choice.”

Rates at the 60-room hotel lead in at NZ$49 per night in a private room with shared bathroom or $89 with ensuite. Customers using both Jucy Rentals and the Jucy Hotel get a free hotel night for every 14 days of vehicle hire and 15 per cent off the price of any room while hiring a car or campervan.

For more information visit jucyhotel.com.au.