Tourism WA chair and restaurateur, Kate Lamont, believes Western Australia’s tourism promotion should be focused on markets that bring in big-spending tourists rather than attracting lots of low-spending ones.
Ms Lamont said capacity constraints meant the focus needed to shift from volume to margin.
The corporate sector has helped push airlines flying into WA and hotels to full capacity, leaving little room for significant increases in tourist numbers.
“If we want to double our market share of interstate visitors we need an extra one million airline seats,” Ms Lamont said.
“But if we can get visitors who are already here to spend an extra $100 over their stay then we make an extra $500 million on the $4.6 billion that is spent annually.
“Instead of concentrating on getting more people, we need to concentrate on getting people who spend more. Marketing into destinations and market segments that aren’t offering profitable yields is crazy.”
WA Tourism Owners Group spokesman Manny Papadoulis said initial criticism of Tourism WA’s ‘Real Thing’ advertising campaign from tourism operators had subsided after the ads were changed last month to include a tactical call to action for people to visit WA.
He said TWA changed its campaign into the east coast dramatically to include more information for potential visitors to make bookings, as well as allowing individual operators to participate.
“The first lot of commercials didn’t mention WA until right at the end,” Mr Papadoulis said.
But he said the international campaign was not reworked to the same extent.
