FOCUS : Australia Pitches Hard for American Tourists
In a bid to revitalize its recession-wracked economy, Australians in the public and private sector have begun to step up efforts to bolster tourism--successfully using a “Great White Shark” to encourage more Americans to visit.
Blond Australian golfer Greg Norman--known in sporting circles as the Great White Shark--is the pitchman in a new advertising campaign using a “Fair Dinkum Australia” theme. Fair Dinkum is an Australian expression meaning “genuine.”
With an unemployment rate at about 9%--up from about 6% in 1990, the government’s Australian Tourist Commission has launched an $11-million campaign to persuade more Americans to take a 1991 vacation “Down Under.”
Many economists say Australia has been buffeted by the harsh winds of global competition, partly because it has relied so much on the export of raw materials such as iron ore and wool. It is a poor strategy, they say, because commodity prices have declined in value compared to finished goods.
Also, Australia has had difficulty attracting job-creating foreign investment because the country is still trying to overcome image problems. Many still perceive it as a country of constant labor strife, said Mike Van Horn, president of the San Francisco-based Pacific Rim Consortium, an international investment consultant.
Some tourism industry leaders say the Australian economy can most efficiently be buoyed by bolstering the travel and leisure industry.
The United States is seen as the market with the greatest potential for growth because it is large but under-exploited by Australians. For example, a study based on interviews with 2,400 Americans concluded that Australia is the foreign country U.S. citizens would most like to visit. The survey was conducted by Menlo Consulting Group, a Palo Alto-based travel research firm.
Currently, more Japanese, New Zealanders and Britons visit Australia than Americans.
The commission is spending $1 million on public relations and direct-mail solicitations and about $4 million on magazine ads. It’s also spending about $6 million on the television portion of the campaign. That’s $3 million more than it spent on television in 1990, a year in which recession-conscious Americans traveled less. In fact, only about 250,700 American vacationed in Australia last year, the lowest figure since 1986.
The commission says it has already received nearly 120,000 queries from Americans who viewed the first commercial, which was broadcast in Los Angeles and five other U.S. cities between May 27 and June 30. A second commercial will be broadcast over the next two months.
Partly as a result of the campaign, American pleasure visits to Australia in 1991 are expected to increase by about 8% over 1990, said the commission’s John King, director of the Los Angeles-based office responsible for Australian travel promotion in the Americas.
Including visitors from other parts of the world, said King, tourism is expected to be Australia’s greatest single generator of foreign earnings for the third consecutive year. In the No. 2 position is the nation’s export-oriented mineral industry.
“One of the great benefits of tourism is that the money it generates is spread more rapidly around the country than many other industries,” King said. “A little more than 6% (of the Australian work force) is engaged in tourism--more (jobs) than any other industry.’
Industry leaders have become more active in tourism councils in the eight Australian states and have used organizations such as the Australian Tourism Task Force--a national trade group formed two years ago--to coordinate their promotional efforts.
Among the most active is Peter Laurance, an entrepreneur who serves as a member of the national tourism task force. Laurance, who owns a Sea World property in the state of Queensland and other travel and leisure operations, is a self-styled booster of Australian tourism.
He recently completed a promotional tour in the United States in an attempt to drum up interest in Australia as a tourist destination.
“Australia has a great (vacation) product,” Laurance said. “Australia is not a great manufacturing nation and has not produced goods competitively. . . . Tourism is a solution to unemployment and the trade deficit.”
Laurance’s companies and other Australian firms in the leisure and hospitality industries have benefited from reduced airline fares. Qantas, the Australian airline, dropped its ticket prices in March. American airlines serving Australia--United, American, Continental and Northwest--responded by also cutting their fares.
In all, the airlines have sold 35,000 special fare seats for travel between March and September, 1991. That is the heaviest Australian-bound booking in the United States since 1988, the year Australia had a record-high 322,000 American visitors.
Industry observers say another celebrity television spokesman for the Australian Tourist Commission--Paul Hogan of “Crocodile Dundee” movie fame--helped generate interest in 1988.
Americans traveling to Australia in 1991 are frequently opting for natural attractions featured in the current ad campaign--mountains in Tasmania, rain forests and the Great Barrier Reef of Queensland, said Sarita Skidmore, a partner at Menlo Consulting Group, the travel industry research and consulting firm.
“The 1980s were--in many ways--a vacuous decade of conspicuous consumption,” Skidmore said.
“Today, we have a more sober population that is more environmentally conscious and these natural images in (commercial) messages are more appealing.”
