Paul Hogan says that "People, Not Places" are the key to Australian Tourism

Great Debates
41

Me or Martini Enfield? :slight_smile:

Happy to have you but you have to like cats, a large goofy dog, and the stench of a 14 year old boy.

42

What about your excellent music scene? The Darwin Festival and I’m sure there are others, that would attract a following of young-at-heart free spending vacationers from around the globe.

43

I’ve never had a big desire to go to Australia. Culturally, what do they have to offer that I couldn’t get in Europe or the United States? I don’t mean to imply that Australians don’t have their own unique culture (I kind of think of them as South Pacific Americans myself. That’s right, move over American Samoa). What Australia does have to offer are things that I can’t get over in the U.S. We don’t have that big giant rock, the outback (steakhouse excluded of course), or the Great Barrier Reef. If I ever go to Australia that’s what I want to see.

Odesio

44

Ticket price and travel time … being compressed into cattle class for 12-22 hours is way too long since we can get to the Caribbean in 4-8 hours for a lot less $$.

The other main issue is already pointed out - once you are down under, you generally have to pick a city on the east or west coast, and stay there. It is pretty much not done to go to both Cairns and Perth, the airline cost and travel time is just not desirable. Americans are into instant gratification. We want everything to be within an hour of our hotel…unless it is deliberately a bus tour like the ones that go around the countryside of some small [comparatively] country or countries in Europe where the distance between cities can be an hour or 2, not 10 or 20 hours.

That being said, I would love to do 2 weeks in Cairns, or a couple weeks opal mining in the middle … well actually hubby would be doing the mining, I would be watching and socializing, but to be honest it would be much less spendy for us to go opal mining here in Nevada at some place like the Peacock Opal Mines, that offers the opportunity to opal mine.

45

There’s a really interesting story on news.com.au that I think sums the situation up perfectly- I certainly agree with every word of it, anyway.

46

China & Japan are the main sources for Australia’s tourism dollars, followed by Britain & India IIRC. The US is a relative drop in the bucket.

47

For me, the two things that really appeal to me about Australia are:

  1. The landcape - specifically, the vast open spaces where you can walk (or even drive) all day and not see a soul. That is a totally alien experience for someone from an overcrowded island like Great Britain, although I appreciate that it may be less of a draw for Americans, as there are plenty of large wilderness areas in the US too.

  2. The history - I find it fascinating how such a modern and civilised country has grown up in such a short space of time from such unpromising beginnings, and there are lots of well-preserved colonial- and even convict-era buildings around that illustrate this. Again, this has parallels in the US so may not be so interesting to Americans.

I’ve only visited once, although I was lucky enough to be able to spend about two months there. Even so, I only saw the tiniest fraction of the country. I definitely plan to go back, especially as one of my friends has recently emigrated to Sydney with his Australian girlfriend.