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Welcome
I welcome you to one of the most eagerly-anticipated events in this year’s tourism industry calendar.
In particular, I welcome Dr Du Jiang and your colleagues from the China National Tourism Administration.
The Tourism Summit is a visible sign of the huge amount of work going on behind the scenes to strengthen tourism between Australia and China.
Your participation in the Summit is part of the joint State and Federal Government $12 million Tourism Industry Support Package for Queensland.
The March quarter figures show just how damaging the summer floods and cyclones where.
Although there were 47,000 less international visitors to Queensland a drop of nine percent, Chinese visitors increased fifteen percent- a sure sign of the times!
In my capacity as both Minister for Resources and Energy and Minister for Tourism I have made a number of business trips to China to progress our bilateral trade relationship.
And while unfortunately I didn’t get to the Australia Pavilion at World Expo in Shanghai last year- a remarkable 8 million visitors did.
That is just one sign of the popularity of “Brand Australia” with the Chinese market.
I was reminded by a recent article in the New Yorker Magazine that for several millennia, ordinary people in China did not travel internationally.
Instead they visited relatives in China.
It wasn’t until 1978 that approval was provided for Chinese people to visit, first relatives in Hong Kong and later to tour Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.
In 1999 Australia was one of the first western countries to gain Approved Destination Status allowing Chinese group leisure travel to Australia.
Now China is the fastest growing outbound market in the world.
Last year 57.4 million Chinese travelled abroad spending 48 billion US dollars in other countries.
Of these, 454,000 travelled to Australia, some 24 per cent more than the previous year.
In the past five years, arrivals from China have grown by about ten per cent a year.
It’s no surprise, then, that China is now Australia’s most valuable tourism market.
Within a decade, visitors from China are forecast to bring $6 billion into the Australian economy in a single year.
That’s roughly double the economic value of Chinese visitors in Australia at the moment.
These figures testify to three things – rising prosperity in China, Australia’s unique attractions and the hard work being done by so many enterprises to seize the potential.
The growth of the Chinese tourism market is a big opportunity for Australia and we are enthusiastically embracing it with both hands.
Growth-enhancing measures
Unsurprisingly, the growth from China is being witnessed by other countries as well.
The US, for example had 810,000 visitors from China last year, some 53 percent more than the previous year.
So the competition is strong.
But so is our commitment to the market and the needs of our Chinese visitors.
We will be making every cent count of the $30 million we’re investing in the China tourism market over the next four years.
2020 Strategic Plan
Today, I’m unveiling Tourism Australia’s China 2020 Strategic Plan- a major contribution to our thinking on ways to strengthen our relationship.
Tourism Australia has been active in the Chinese market since opening its office there in 1999.
Over the last 12 years Tourism Australia has helped build a broad and robust travel distribution network training over 2,000 Chinese travel agents through the Aussie Specialist Program;
The Plan gives the Australian tourism industry a clear direction for investing with Tourism Australia in our strong brand to make the most of the growing tourism business from China.
As the Chinese population rapidly becomes urbanised, we need to understand more about what people read, watch and listen to.
For example, China has a strong digital and social networking environment to plug into.
It was most recently flooded with excitement as millions watched China’s La Ni take out the country’s first Grand Slam singles title at the French Open so we’ll need to keep an eye on the popularity of tennis!
As China’s middle class rapidly expands and more people travel abroad we need to understand more about how consumers plan and book their holidays, and how to better service the needs of the Chinese visitor.
The short term future at least, needs to be about congee for breakfast, Chinese speaking tour guides, feng shui room designs including having beds away from the windows and Chinese signage. I know hotel groups such as Accor have already embraced some of these changes.
The Plan outlines the scope to stretch our marketing reach beyond Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong to other cities.
The third theme is about supporting and growing quality Australian experiences through both the ADS and the National Tourism Accreditation Scheme.
Fifty tour operators are now approved under the Approved Destination Status scheme – which has notched up ten years of making sure travel groups enjoy the standards of quality they have come to expect.
Australia’s ADS is seen by our friends in China as best practice.
That’s why we’re investing another $4 million to
continuously improve the ADS scheme- an important step given over 140 countries now enjoy ADS status.
And finally the plan focuses on aviation access- more planes and more connections to more destinations will also help us to match supply with demand.
Tourism Australia Managing Director- Andrew McEvoy will say more about the China 2020 Strategic Plan later this morning.
This document is a blueprint for growth, and I commend it to you.
The Memorandum of Understanding recently witnessed by the Prime Minister and Premier Wen Jiabao is a milestone.
The MoU promotes cooperation on things like travel by individuals and company-paid incentive travel.
The MoU provided up to 8,000 extra airline seats per week for Australian and Chinese carriers.
A further streamlining of visa arrangements for Chinese travellers would also promote further growth.
To encourage specific measures, the Australia China Tourism Dialogue was created.
Indeed, the Dialogue is part of this summit.
It’s the first time that high-level tourism officials from both countries have met here in Queensland.
Investment
To make the most of emerging markets such as China, Australia’s approach must have investment at its core.
And unlike the news on arrivals and spending, the news on the investment front is less rosy.
Indeed, investment growth in the tourism industry is slow.
And that’s the main finding of research unveiled today by Tourism Research Australia.
It says tourism industry investment grew by just three per cent a year in the past decade.
That was barely half the rate of the economy as a whole.
Clearly, there has been a mismatch between actual investment and demand for investment in the recent past.
And that’s especially true in the private sector.
As the TRA report points out, around 40 per cent of total investment in the tourism industry was public.
That compares with just 20 per cent for all industries.
So the tourism industry needs to invest in new and refreshed products, while making greater returns.
And with strong occupancy rates in capital cities the time is right for new investment.
Through the National Long Term Tourism Strategy, significant work is being done to identify investment opportunities and remove impediments to new investment.
Australia is open to foreign investment in hotels and tourism infrastructure.
My colleague Senator Nick Sherry is meeting with investors on Friday to further progress this issue.
Carbon pricing
I’d like to now turn to the issue of carbon pricing
We’ve had submissions from a variety of sectors, not least in my other portfolios of resources and energy.
The Australian Government will announce its position on carbon pricing in due course.
In the meantime, we are consulting industry.
Of course, tourism has a large stake in the outcome.
On the one hand, excessive curbs on travel to save carbon may hamper growth in the tourism industry.
On the other hand, some of our biggest natural attractions – especially here in Queensland – cannot afford years of delay in carbon mitigation around the world.
So we need a balanced approach – one that makes the necessary breakthroughs in reducing carbon emissions, and in a way that maintains jobs and prosperity.
But it is important to note that no decisions have been taken on the final design of the carbon pricing mechanism or the final package of assistance to households and industry.
The decision on household compensation will be important for the tourism industry which is driven by discretionary expenditure
As will the final decisions about the treatment of fuel.
The Future
The future growth of Australia’s tourism industry is positive.
The number of passengers moving through our international terminals rose by nearly ten per cent last year.
And air capacity from China alone is expected to grow by 33 per cent this year.
Aviation strengthens economic growth.
That’s why the Australian Government removed investment obstacles at our major airports, by extending tripartite deeds to 50 years.
We’ve also enabled airports to invest up to $9 billion in modern facilities and infrastructure.
I remain optimistic about the resilience of the tourism industry and the signs are positive- with visitor spending forecast to increase 2 percent to $95 billion this year.
We’re expecting to welcome an additional 120,000 Chinese visitors this year, 26 per cent more than last year.
And with numbers like that, it’s easy to see how within a decade, visitors from China are forecast to bring $6 billion into the Australian economy in a single year- as I previously mentioned.
Conclusion
Ladies and Gentlemen, our relationship with China is growing and strengthening by the day.
Not only is this good for business- it plays an enormous role in cross cultural understanding and education.
And the benefits of this tourism summit will go on bringing people together for many years to come.
I thank you all including our special Chinese guests for coming, and I trust all of you will take enduring value away from this gathering.