Push to share more of China’s 80 million tourists

ROBYN IRONSIDE, PAIGE TAYLOR
NOVEMBER 1, 2018
Australia must be more ambitious in its pursuit of a bigger share of more than 80 million Chinese travellers a year and stop relying on the appeal of past triumphs such as the Sydney ­Olympics, according to a blunt assessment of the tourism sector by Sydney ­Airport chief executive Geoff Culbert.
Mr Culbert, who took over running the country’s major international gateway this year, said current targets for overseas visitors to Australia could be much higher, as businesses in every state and territory hoped to cash in on Chinese tourists who outspent visitors from anywhere else in the world.
“I’ve lived 10 years in Asia, in Tokyo and Hong Kong, and I’ve seen the ambition of other nations and I feel like sometimes we’re a bit too comfortable,” he told The Australian. “I don’t think we’re playing to win; I think we’re playing not to lose.”
In the 12 months to March this year, 1.3 million Chinese people visited Australia, a figure that is expected to reach 3.3 million by 2026. Yet Australia remains outside the top 10 countries visited by Chinese travellers and trails the US, according to data published by the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute.
Mr Culbert said Thailand already attracted more than 10 million Chinese visitors a year.
“I’d like to see us as a country recapture some of that pioneering spirit that made us so great in the 1970s, 80s and 90s when we grew rapidly, and I’d like us as a nation to have that sort of ambition.”
Even modest increases in the number of visitors from China are highly valuable to Australian tourism: in the year to March, a 13 per cent increase in Chinese visitors accounted for 52 per cent of total growth in international visitor spending. Each Chinese visitor to Australia stays a median of 10 nights and spends, on average, $8472. The next biggest spenders are the Swiss, who spend an average $6580.
New data to be released soon by the office of Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham is expected to show continued growth in ­Chinese visitors.
Tasmania is a small powerhouse when it comes to attracting Chinese tourists and Western Australia, where the tourism sector is otherwise considered to be struggling, still experienced an 8 per cent increase in visitors from China in the year to March.
Some businesses in Western Australia attribute this in part to an accreditation program run by the Tourism Council of WA called ChinaReady, which is recognised by China’s peak tourism body.
Wendy Mann said her business, Geraldton Air Charters, took off after she completed the ­accreditation and hired a Chinese marketing officer on a 457 visa.
“The accreditation changed things because the customer knows that the Chinese government is vouching that you know how to look after them,” she said.
Ms Mann’s business now employs four Cantonese and Man­darin-speaking pilots and 70 per cent of her customers are Chinese. This year she has taken more than 3000 Chinese visitors on joy flights over a pink lake north of the mid-west city of Geraldton.
“Some of them are students from Melbourne and Sydney who fly over just for the weekend … it must cost them thousands,” Ms Mann said.
Recent forecasts by the International Air Transportation Association showed China would overtake the US as the largest aviation market in the world by 2037, and India would become the third biggest market ahead of Britain.
Mr Culbert said it was time to look ahead to a new “Olympic-sized achievement” rather than trading on past glories.
“I’ll go to events and people still talk about the Sydney Olympics, which was wonderful, but it was nearly 20 years ago,” he said.
“What’s our ambition for our next event that people are going to talk about for the next 20 years? Let’s do something that’s really meaningful, that’s going to rewrite our history.”
The lack of a “night-time economy” was another concern of Mr Culbert, who said Sydney was not a truly 24-hour city.
“We like to project ourselves as a cutting-edge global international city but when you go out at 10 or 11 o’clock at night and there’s not much going on, we need to start asking ourselves: ‘Do we want to compete globally?’ ” he said.
Tourism Australia managing director John O’Sullivan agreed there was no room for complacency in the tourism industry, but he said Australia was never going to be a “mass-volume destination” for international visitors because of its geography and cost.
Yao Shang has visited Australia with his wife and daughter twice this year, exploring many of the east coast tourist hot spots.
Australia appeals to him because of the way of life. “Australia is the sunshine country. It’s a different place — animals, weather and coast,” he said. “When we are on vacation, we could go to north Europe or another Asian place or Australia. We always choose Australia. It is familiar and like home.”