Exhibit A: Proof that backpacking has a public relations problem
My good friend Peter McMahon sent me an interesting link this week.
It’s from a website called traveltrends, the brainchild of Martin Kelly. Martin is a fantastically well-connected journalist specialising in travel technology. He’s also the man behind a bunch of highly respected conferences including TRAVELtech, No Vacancy (for the accommodation industry) and Search Engine Room, which focuses on search engine optimisation and marketing.
If you attended the ATEC Backpacker Conference in Byron Bay a few years back, you would’ve heard him speak there too.
Anyway, he’s posted an interesting piece this week, highlighting the fact international travellers under 30 now represent 32 per cent of all visitors to Australia.
Good news, I’m sure we all agree.
What depresses me, though, is his last paragraph. “So why haven’t we heard more about them?” he asks, adding “perhaps if present growth trends continue, we will”.
If a man like Martin Kelly is wondering aloud why the youth travel industry is still punching below its weight, we clearly have a bigger public relations job to do than I first thought.
By Martin Lane · February 3rd, 2010 at 9:34 am
Comments
9 Feb 10
5:00 pm
This is hardly proof of anything if you ask me. Just some guy looking for content and comment.
greg cole
9 Feb 10
6:14 pm
Thanks for obliging Greg
9 Feb 10
9:23 pm
The term “Public relations problem” brings to mind an industry with a seedy side or possibly a politician caught with their pants down. It conjurs up images of an industy in need of some spin or that has something to hide. Gunns Limited (rightly so!) has a public relations problem, we don’t.
The problem (if that’s what you want to call it) as I see it is the very nature if backpacking or “independant travel”, the nature of those who travel and more importantly those who work in the industry. There are so many operators I know who are in it simply for the experiance and to be involved.They have a product, destination or experiance they love and all they want to do is share it with like minded travellers. They’re not interested in showing off how many visitors they’ve had, how many trips have gone out full or how many nights they are booked out and as a result stay off the radar. We’re lucky enough to work in an industry that has not lost track of where it started. Things are changing but all is not lost….yet.
Let’s resist the urge to crow about everything we do and clamor for attention from the mainstream afterall things have been progressing pretty well so far!
10 Feb 10
8:33 am
This story quotes statistics from 2007, not worth reading or quoting. The only real proof is that the backpacking industry is growing in Australia and has helped many tourism operators cruise through the Global downturn.
10 Feb 10
9:22 am
Always obliging, Martin. Perhaps though the PR Guy has a backpacking problem?
22 Mar 10
9:49 am
A follow up on this item is last week’s No Vacancy conference in Sydney which I attended and which is organised by Martin Kelly. It’s one of those conferences where about half the presentations are great and have you writing notes, and you can dose off the other half of the time with the weaker presenters.
But interestingly, only YHA and Global Gossip (that I saw) from the backpacker industry attended. All the major hotel chains and lots of 3rd party web people were there. Is this a case of where an opportunity is missed by the backpacker industry to step out side our narrow focus of attention, and take a look at the issues facing the whole accommodation sector which, like it or not, always end up affecting us anyway. Just a thought.
22 Mar 10
12:17 pm
Narrow focus? I think you’re talking to the wrong crowd, Janet. Not a day goes by without some spruiker threatening our corporate demise through non-attendance at this or that conference. Luckily our wider focus allows us a narrow focus on the wider picture. Then again my day wouldn’t be complete without some expert born in the 80′s telling me that I need to pay them $5k to learn how to speak to the rest of the 80′s children. “And dude”, they tell me, “it’s almost already too late, sign up now”.
Janet, I didn’t attend this conference. It may well have been the Antony Robbins type event of the year. My point is I, and a few of my colleagues have conference fatigue. These days it seems those who are the richer from these events are not the delegates
but the spruikers.
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