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National Sports Tourism Strategy to boost regions

By Jackie Kelly, Federal Minister for Sport and Tourism

Tourism is one of Australia's major industries and our most important service industry. It has, for some years, been one of the fastest growing segments of the Australian economy, and current trends indicate it will continue to be a key source of economic growth, jobs and export earnings in the future.

This year is turning out to be a record year for tourism &endash; latest figures show international tourist numbers are up and well on track to meeting the Tourism Forecasting Council's prediction of a 9.5 percent increase for the year.

The Sydney 2000 Games was a great boost for the tourism industry, especially with the enormous surge in media exposure, including the promotion of Australia as a tourist destination. The TFC predicts the Games will attract an additional 1.6 million visitors to Australia right through to 2004.

One of the spin offs of staging sporting events is their potential to raise the profile of the host city, town or region, mainly through coverage of the event. The marketing of these events presents many opportunities for promoting broader tourism attractions and highlights.

Sporting events are now a recognised niche tourism market with significant growth potential in both the domestic and inbound sectors &endash; and the Federal Government is developing a National Sports Tourism Strategy to coordinate this market's growth.

Sports tourism flows from attendance and participation at sporting events, training camps and other sporting activities.

Spectators, athletes and their support teams all utilise the services used by other kinds of tourists: accommodation facilities, transport services, food and beverage services, retail businesses and attractions.

The Federal Government's National Sports Tourism Strategy will be developed in partnership with the tourism and sport and recreation industries to provide a strategic focus for realising the many opportunities of this potentially lucrative market.

The strategy will be looking at ways to identify how the sport and tourism industries can work towards outcomes of mutual benefit.

Opportunities to maximise the benefits of sports events include assessing the scope for staging more and different types of events and spreading the benefits of new and existing events to more regions.

Australia's regional areas can offer visitors a vast and exciting range of tourism experiences, and tourism is an industry which can complement existing regional industries, boost local economies and create jobs.

Latest figures show that domestic tourists are spending more money in regional Australia and 30 per cent of international visitors' expenditure was in regional areas.

The Federal Government is committed to developing the outstanding tourism potential of regional Australia and is offering two grant programs in 2000-01 to further develop tourism in regional Australia by providing funding assistance for suitable projects.

The Regional Tourism Program aims to help boost the capacity of businesses and organisations to deliver higher quality tourism attractions, products and services in regional Australia. In 1999-2000, 36 successful projects from throughout Australia were funded.

The 2000-2001 program has already received a significant number of applications and all successful projects will be announced in 2001.

With the rapid development of information technology, it is important that regional tourism operators are well prepared, innovative and able to access the rapidly expanding opportunities for tourism over the Internet. The Regional Online Tourism Program's aim is to develop geographically based regional tourism websites which cover a range of tourism products and services in regional areas.

The 1999-2000 Regional Online Tourism Program funded 24 projects from around Australia. Already the 2000-2001 program has received a significant number of applications, and successful projects will be announced in 2001.

The future presents an exciting picture of growth and innovation for tourism. The challenge for the industry is to make the best use of this potential over the next decade.

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