Page 2876 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 17 September 2014
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The same is seen in travel taken by Australians. If you go back another two quarters—and I can go back more if people want—to March 2014, in that quarter, overnight trips by Australians had grown nationally by four per cent yet had declined by three per cent in the ACT. Visitor nights had grown by one per cent nationally but had declined by 17 per cent in the ACT. Expenditure had grown by four per cent nationally but had declined by eight per cent in the ACT.
Again, if you go to the December quarter, overnight trips had gone up nationally by two per cent but by five per cent in the ACT. Well done, a bit of a buzz there from the centenary. Visitor nights nationally were zero per cent but visitor nights even in the centenary year had dropped domestically by five per cent. But the saving grace is that the expenditure in that quarter nationally had gone up by three per cent but had gone up by 13 per cent to December 2013 through traffic by Australians.
What we want to make through this motion is the case that there is still much more to be done for tourism in the ACT. As I said before the centenary year started, we needed to make sure that we had in place measures to see what the effect was. I had hoped that we were prepared to cash in on all of the expenditure in the centenary year but the earlier results would indicate that that is not the case.
When the figures came out in August the Australian government, through Tourism Research Australia, listed visitor perceptions of the ACT. I will quickly go through the executive summary because it is quite insightful. It is particularly interesting, given that we have just had a debate on the arts, that art and culture, of course, is one of the drivers. There are four pillars in perception gaps of the ACT, four key tourism experience pillars. We have got food and wine, art and culture, family fun and outdoor adventure. This research was conducted in three phases throughout April and May 2014.
In the leisure market the people who were surveyed, prior to being given stimulus material, were asked what they thought about Canberra. Then there was their impression afterwards. The impression of Canberra by repeat leisure visitors was:
Widely recognised for its significance as the … capital, although appeal varied
There were a range iconic attractions but there was a strong perception that the attractions were simply focused on education. There was a mixed impression of the city itself. There were comments from some:
Sprawling layout can result in an empty feeling, but wide open spaces/lack of traffic were appealing
Doesn’t always translate to a desired ‘holiday’ feel
A ‘been there, done that’ destination.
The view of Canberra by those who had never visited for leisure was that yes, they knew we had national attractions but they were sometimes dull. The iconic attractions were prominent, they were valued for their national experience and the experiential learning for the whole family. We were seen as sombre:
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