The Rudd Government will invest $5.5 million over four years to implement and operate the National Tourism Accreditation Framework (NTAF) to strengthen Australia's tourism industry.
The NTAF is a major step forward for the Australian tourism industry and will help position the industry to compete on the basis of quality and reliability.
Under the NTAF:
- High quality Australian businesses will carry a quality mark or logo which will be promoted to tourists.
- In return, businesses that carry the mark will be required to continually improve their products and services in return for global promotion.
- Accredited businesses will be listed on Australia.com and in the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse where wholesalers will have online access to accredited businesses.
Assuring the quality of Australia's tourism products through accreditation is essential to provide tourists with confidence and will position Australian tourism for long-term health and success.
The NTAF will bring together over twenty existing ratings and accreditation programs under one governance framework. This will help the tourism industry to strategically manage quality and build a single, strong brand, quality mark and logo.
Australia has 580,000 tourism businesses, a third of which are in regional Australia and 93 per cent of which are small businesses. The NTAF will help promote market confidence in regional and small businesses that lack the advertising capacity or brand reputation of iconic destinations and bigger operators.
All existing accreditation programs have agreed to the guidelines of the proposed NTAF. New programs entering the NTAF will be required to meet their own costs. The Rudd Government's funding commitment will go towards the development of a common mark for the NTAF, the marketing and promotion of the mark or brand and staff for administrative and policy support to the NTAF.
The marketing and promotion of a quality tourism brand has been a great success in New Zealand with Qualmark promoting the "100 per cent pure" New Zealand brand. Similar marks are being used to promote tourism quality in other destinations such as Spain, Singapore, Switzerland and Hong Kong.
The Australian Government wants to work with industry and state and territory governments to achieve the same success with a quality mark here in Australia.
This major step forward for the tourism industry is another part of the Government's plan to strengthen the Australian economy for the future.