YATEC Diary – 2nd session

Western versus Eastern markets as well as countries providing increasing visitor numbers were on the agenda for the second session of the Young Australian Tourism Export Council’s National Development Program last week.  

Participants were presented with a wealth of information from the three speakers for the evening who included Four Seasons Sydney sales manager Jenny Wong, Voyages Hotels and Resorts international sales manager Jodie Scott  and Tourism Australia manager international – western Leigh Sorensen.

Eastern markets

Wong kicked off the evening discussing the differing travel characteristics between Australia’s key inbound eastern markets; China, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.

She explained some of the challenges facing Australia with these markets including the swine flu outbreak which is still to this day prevalent in Japan and South Korea’s media. Wong said it is key for Australia’s inbound tourism industry to be prepared for the unexpected and be able to adapt.

Air capacity is another challenge for Australia with daily services from Japan scaled back, Wong said.

Other challenges mentioned for the eastern markets include short annual leave time for Asian employees, a volatile exchange rate, Australia being considered a long-haul destination and a demand for fast turn-around time which can prove difficult with the current product distribution system.

Despite the challenges, Wong recognised the opportunities within this growing market with now the best time to travel as travellers are able to upgrade to a five star holiday for the same price as a four star five years ago.

Western markets

Jodie Scott from Voyages was next to present. She has been a mentor to members of YATEC for four years and with Voyages for nearly three years.

Scott divided eastern markets into UK/Ireland, North America/Canada, Europe (France, Germany and Italy) and New Zealand and like Wong, identified the characteristics of each market.

An interesting difference between the four core markets was how differing annual leave allowances for each country means they need to be targeted differently. For example, North Americans are on average given two weeks of annual leave per year. This means that when they visit Australia they are most concerned with ticking the box of “Sydney, Rock and Reef”, Scott said. Whereas UK and European travellers have longer annual leave periods and therefore greater dispersal throughout the country and longer length of stay. Scott also identified Italy as a strong inbound market for honeymooners with couples flocking to Voyages’ properties in the months of July and August.

New Zealand, although international, is considered a domestic market by Voyages as they buy travel differently, they require a shorter lead time and 92 per cent are return visitors to Australia, Scott said.

Key challenges for the western markets that were addressed include: encouraging visitors to travel further around the country, international competitors, economic influences such as the Global Financial Crisis and employing and retaining quality staff to meet western standards.

Opportunities available to Australian operators to target the western markets include: a strong luxury segment, increased air capacity, new airlines such as V Australia and the expansion of the Delta Air Lines network.

Emerging markets

To round up the evening, Tourism Australia’s (TA) Leigh Sorensen spoke about the emerging markets for Australia’s inbound tourism industry. He said Tourism Australia was paying particular attention to Russia, Latin America and the Nordic Region due to increasing visitor numbers but was concerned with educating the trade before promoting to consumers as it’s pointless to get consumers visiting their travel agents to book a holiday to Australia if their agent doesn’t know a thing about it.

Sorensen said TA is educating the trade in these markets through trade missions, Inbound Tourism Operator (ITO) consultation and getting buyers to attend the Australian Tourism Exchange, among others.

He added that TA is predicting these emerging markets to provide almost 16 per cent of total arrivals to Australia by the year 2017.

Tonight participants will learn about the distribution system and gain an insight from both a supplier and ITO’s perspective with presentations from Bradley Moody of Hilton Hotels and David Thomas of Swain Tours.

Thumbrella reporter Alice Terlikowski is participating in the Young Australian Tourism Export Council’s National Development Program and will be blogging on a weekly basis following each session to give Thumbrella readers an insight into the eight-week program.

By Alice Terlikowski  ·  October 20th, 2009 at 3:51 pm

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