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Real Action To Create New Jobs And Growth For Gold Coast Tourism
| 29 July 2010
The Gold Coast’s tourism industry has taken a serious blow from the global financial crisis and the neglect of the industry by the Rudd/Gillard Government. Millions of dollars of tourism income have disappeared from the local economy, seriously impacting local jobs and local families. With that in mind, a Coalition government will commit $28 million in new money for Australian business events tourism to help reinvigorate local tourism.
The Coalition understands that tourism is a vital part of the Australian and Gold Coast economies. Tourism employs nearly 500,000 people, accounting for $92 billion in economic activity and generating $24 billion in export earnings. Almost 10,500 people living in the Moncrieff electorate alone derive their livelihoods directly from tourism, while many thousand more are indirectly reliant on tourism for their living.
The Coalition recognises business events travellers are among the most lucrative and produce the highest yield of any travellers for tourism operators. The business events industry currently generates around $17.6 billion a year to the Australian economy and employs more than 116,000 people.
While the Gold Coast remains comparatively dominant in the business events sector, in the year to June 2009 business delegates to the Gold Coast fell 42 per cent, delegate expenditure shrank by 38 per cent and total delegate days fell by 41 per cent. These falls reflected national and state declines. These figures make the Coalition’s additional $28 million to boost business events tourism even more critical for the local economy and will help bring our business events marketing capacity in line with our international competitors.
This will include a new industry partnership Business Events Bid and Boost Fund, with a $17.5 million injection from the Commonwealth to provide the business events sector with significant money to support bids for key international conferences and boost delegates attending conferences.
This addresses the need to not only attract more international conferences, but also to grow the number of delegates attending conferences to maximise the return on investment. The Coalition will also provide an additional $10.5 million for Tourism Australia to boost marketing of Business Events Australia, representing an increase of around 50 per cent of the current funding.
The Rudd/Gillard Government cut funding for Business Events Australia by more than 10 per cent on the eve of the global financial crisis. This significant investment will be delivered over four years. The Coalition will be releasing further details of our Real Action Plan for Tourism throughout the election campaign.
29 July 2010