Relax Visa Rules For Tourists From Developing Countries, Says UN

AUSTRALIA needs to relax its strict visa requirements for visitors from developing countries if it wants to boost tourism and effectively target the emerging giants of China and India. 

UN World Tourism Organisation secretary-general Taleb Rifai yesterday said there was no evidence that tough entry conditions on tourists were necessary to protect security, and Australia and other developed countries needed to ease their regimes.

"Visas are becoming a real nightmare," Mr Rifai told a tourism conference in Melbourne.

"It is not reasonable to still see long lines, very cumbersome, uneasy, complicated, lengthy, overpriced entry formalities all over the world, particularly facing nationals from countries that are rising and countries that are providing the base for future incoming tourists.

"There is no evidence to establish that there are close and very strong links between visas and security issues."

Chinese and Indian visitors have provided the greatest annual growth to tourism numbers over the past decade but face a number of bureaucratic hurdles to come here.

Those travelling to Australia for the first time must provide bank statements or other financial information, as well as a letter from their employer showing their position and salary, length of employment and approval for leave, or evidence of enrolment for students.

If visiting relatives or friends, a letter of invitation from the relative or friend in Australia may also be required.

While the tourism industry has bemoaned the high Australian dollar for making Australia less competitive as a destination, Mr Rifai told The Australian visa requirements and easier international travel should be seen as a greater priorities.

"The cost is not the major factor here, it's the ease of reaching here, cost of travel and cost and complications of entry," said the former Jordanian government minister.

"Cost is a very important element in competitiveness but it should not be too much of an obsession.
"Some of the most attractive destinations in the world are some of the most expensive destinations in the world as well."

UNESCO has threatened to declare the Great Barrier Reef "in danger" if conservation efforts are not improved, but Mr Rifai said Australia should be congratulated for setting itself high environmental targets.

"The fact that Australia has these very valuable reefs places more responsibility on Australia, but I think all in all you should be satisfied with what you're doing so far," he said. "On environmental counts, Australia is doing very, very well."

Top Five Golden Rules for Female Travellers

Top five Golden rules for female travellers

With 45 percent of woman making up the corporate travel market, International SOS has identified five golden rules to help woman keep safe when travelling for business.

Rule number one: Know Yourself

Understanding your profile and how that profile may be perceived when you travel is vital. Key areas to consider include your physical appearance, travel experience, personality type and budget.

Rule number two: Do your research

Don’t assume, do your research before you travel and know the geography of the city you are visiting, plus be aware of any cultural differences.

Rule number three: Don’t be an easy target

Plan your flights so you arrive in the daytime especially if you are planning to catch a taxi and always use official taxis.

Rule number four: Be assertive

Be confident as appearing unfamiliar can make you a potential target.  Trust your instincts, if something doesn’t feel right it probably isn’t.

Rule number five: Stay calm in a crisis

Statistics have proven that woman are more prone to harassment, assault and hand bag theft therefore it important to know how to respond in a crisis.  Being prepared is key to reducing risk while on business travel

(Source: eTravelblackboard.com)

Perth Festival Opens at Cottesloe Beach

The 2012 Perth International Arts Festival had a perfect start to their tenth festival with a big turnout and stunning weather at Cottesloe Beach this morning.

Perth Festival organisers were uncertain how many people would attend with the early start time of 7am but over 2500 people made their way to the beach for the free event.

Just after sunrise Indigenous Noongar elders and performers opened the Festival with Gina Williams performing a Welcome to Country that included traditional dance and storytelling.

Hundreds of local vocalists and musicians had sand between their toes as they performed on the beach with the Indian Ocean as their backdrop.

It's Artistic Director Jonathan Holloway's first Perth Festival this year after working on the Norfolk and Norwich Festival in the United Kingdom.

"There were very beautiful beaches in North Norfolk but not quite this close and not quite this beautiful and not with this weather," Mr Holloway said.

"You wouldn't find many hundreds of people just randomly wandering along a beach at 6am in Norfolk."

Mr Holloway says he wanted to utilise the natural amphitheatre of Cottesloe Beach for the opening of the 2012 Perth Festival.

"We're cheating really, let's be honest, we've come to the view and the space - then we're filling it rather than creating something."

The Cottesloe dawn event is part of the official opening called 'Dusk: Dawn' and will culminate in the Great Southern with a sunset event on the Albany foreshore for the launch of the tenth year of the Great Southern Festival.

Tonight sees the opening of Beautiful Burnout, an exhilarating piece of physical theatre exploring the thrill and beauty of boxing, being hosted here at the ABC in East Perth. Studio 61 has been transformed with a real boxing ring taking centre stage.

Perth Festival organisers estimate that the festival attracts about half a million people to free and paid events each year and are expecting to sell 220,000 tickets to performances this year.

For more information on upcoming Perth Festival events, visit the Perth Festival website.

Is Australia’s tourism industry up to scratch?

When did you last feel pampered on an Australian holiday? That is, regardless of price, you felt a tourism operator went out of their way to make your holiday feel special. It might have been friendly hotel staff, an excellent waiter, or a business owner who implied nothing was too much trouble.

I know such tourism enterprises exist. The trouble is, too many slack operators drag others down. They have little regard for repeat business. Get as much as they can from tourists on their first and last visit, seems to be the mantra.

They let Australia’s natural beauty do too much of the work for them and seem lazy compared to overseas tourism operators that are far more professional.

What’s your view?

Are standards in Australia’s tourism industry falling?

• How do our tourism standards compare to those overseas?
• Have you encountered slack, overpriced tourism joints?
• What are the real problems in Australia’s tourism industry?
• Have the federal and state governments done enough to help the industry?

I feel sorry for passionate tourism operators who lose repeat business because terrible operators in their tourism “ecosystem” turn a potentially great Australian holiday into a good or average one.

Consider my recent family holiday to the Whitsundays. The accommodation was excellent: attentive staff, great service and zero stress. But the restaurant in town took an hour to serve meals, they did not arrive at the same time, and the waiter could not remember the orders.

The ice-cream man in the main street snapped at a nice old Italian woman who did not realise a queue had formed, and an island resort forced patrons to line up for 30 minutes on a hot day for an awful lunch. Not once were we asked where we hailed from, how our holiday was going or had a tourism attraction recommended.

It’s hard to feel sorry for the tourism industry when standards are this poor.

Yes, I’m nit-picking, but it’s a similar story in far too many Australian tourist destinations, where good operators are let down by poor ones, and innovation is lacking.

What would an American tourist think of such patchy service? I still had a good holiday, but not so good that I would rush to return. I thought, “Next year, I’ll spend the same amount on an overseas holiday that feels like a real holiday, rather than just staying in another town.”

To be fair, Australia’s tourism industry is under intense pressure. The global financial crisis saw more international travellers stay home, and our high dollar and cheap airfare packages encourage record numbers of Australians to travel overseas. Heavy discounting has forced some tourism operators to cut costs to maintain profit margins. All too often, service is the first casualty.

The short-term outlook for tourism is poor. “Australia will continue to lose its share of the global international traveller market as many new destinations emerge,” says business forecaster IBISWorld in its latest tourism industry report. IBIS says an equivalent of 30.2 per cent of Australia’s population takes an overseas trip each year and forecasts this to rise to 50 per cent by 2016-17. That’s a great opportunity in itself for nimble entrepreneurs who can cash in on Australia’s overseas travel boom.

Thank goodness many more Chinese tourists this decade will help offset less domestic travel in Australia.

Even so, it will be a terrible shame if more tourist operators give up on the domestic market as they chase Asian tourists. Our tourism industry has too much of a natural competitive advantage – the country’s vast beauty – to lose share to other destinations.

I’m no tourism expert, but I’ve seen too many industries respond poorly to structural and cyclical threats (retail is an example). The main solution has been to cut costs, damage product quality and wreck brands. Company morale falls and staff only turn up for the pay cheque. Decades of hard work are lost in a few years as even loyal customers start to give up on the product. Innovation and great leadership are lacking.

I wondered why tourism operators in my holiday town did not work closer together and find a way to compete and collaborate at the same time by cross-promoting attractions. I wish more tourist towns adopted a service code of ethics for tourism operators and enforced it. Maybe more stringent accreditation for tourist operators is needed. And I wonder if the quality of customer experiences in Australian tourism are audited enough and benchmarked against other countries.

I wasn’t asked once about the quality of my holiday or any product or service bought.

As an observer outside the tourism industry, it seems so much money is spent (and often wasted) on attracting tourists to Australia, and not enough on improving their travel experience and encouraging repeat business. Do enough international travellers to Australia rave about their experience upon returning home? What about domestic travellers?

A relative who recently returned from Hawaii gushed about the experience and customer service (right or wrong, tipping makes a big difference.) I reckon Far North Queensland has Hawaii covered for natural beauty, but with too much patchy service and standards in Australian tourism, it’s getting harder to make the case to holiday locally – at least for big trips.

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Australia's Airline War Hots Up With Virgin Plans to Steal Market Share

TRAVELLERS will reap the rewards of an airline war with cheaper fares and more regional routes, Virgin Australia boss John Borghetti said.

The airline chief executive who used to work for rival Qantas has revealed ambitious plans to steal market share from his old employer and expan services to regional areas.

"A lot of these routes have not had competition. All you have to do is look at the airfares that are being charged,'' he said.

He also questioned why Qantas had dramatically dropped prices on certain flights after his airline launched business-class services on the same routes.

Mr Borghetti said Qantas reduced business-class fares between Sydney and Perth by nearly 25 per cent after Virgin introduced the same service.

After Virgin announced launch business class fares on the Sydney to Perth route for $1399, Qantas reduced their fares from $2,013 to $1,519.

"Why haven't they done that in the last ten years?''

As well as returning Australian aviation to the kind of competition not seen since the Ansett days, Mr Borghetti also wants to increase his frequent-flyer membership to three million.

Membership of Virgin's Velocity has increased 10 per cent to 2.75 million members in 3 1/2 months.

Pop star Dannii Minogue helped launch a frequent-flyer partnership with Westfield online last week.

Virgin was also given regulatory approval to form an alliance with Singapore Airlines, allowing passengers who book flights with the airline the chance to fly on Singapore Airlines flights, get lounge access and accumulate frequent flyer points.

In addition to previous alliances with Etihad, Delta and Air New Zealand, it will take the number of destinations it flies to to more than 400 worldwide.

Mr Borghetti said the move would open up emerging markets such as China and India and continue the airline's
expansion into regional Australia.

The airline also recently began flying between Brisbane and Port Macquarie and Brisbane and Gladstone and plans to announce new regional routes soon.

"We will now be able to promote regional Australia through those 400 odd destinations around the world, from Dallas to Port Macquarie,'' he said.

As well as reconfiguring the interiors of its domestic planes this year and will launch business class services across the network on January 18.

At the moment, Qantas boasts 41 per cent capacity share in the domestic market or 65 per cent including its low-cost subidiary Jetstar, while Virgin's is about 30 per cent.

But Mr Borghetti said he had no desire for Virgin to be the biggest airline in the country.

"Whatever market share gives the best return is the market share that I want,'' he said.

"What we do have the desire to do is be the airline of choice.''

Perth Last in Poll of Tourism Strategies

WA tourism strategies were given the thumbs down in a new national industry survey that ranked Perth last among mainland capital cities.

The survey by Roy Morgan Research asked industry players to name the city with tourism strategies and products "most attuned to future needs".

Melbourne topped the poll easily with 45 per cent, followed by Sydney on 13 and Brisbane on 4 per cent. Perth and Darwin were last on 2 per cent.

The survey was commissioned by Tourism Victoria in preparation for next month's Tourism and Events Excellence conference in Melbourne.

Conference convenor Tony Charters said the research should be a massive wake-up call for other States. "Clearly Melbourne and Victoria are doing it right in terms of marketing their tourism product and attracting significant events," he said.

The poll attracted 384 respondents, mostly tourism operators, local government officials and representatives of regional and local tourism organisations. Most were from Victoria (49 per cent), Queensland (18) and WA (12).

Tourism WA chief executive Stephanie Buckland said the results were not surprising, given it was a voluntary online survey and most respondents were Victorians.

"In the past 18 months, Tourism WA has significantly restructured and repositioned our agency and strategy specifically so we can work with industry across the State to focus on consumers of the future," she said. "While there is always room for improvement, we are confident with this position."

Perth Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi said the city was working with the State Government and other bodies on a forward-thinking tourism strategy.

She said it was important to target growth markets and this was a priority with Perth's sister cities, particularly Nanjing and Chengdu in China.

It was also important for the State Government to fund tourism strategies and marketing properly, as the Victorian Government did.

Although small, Perth had exciting projects such as the Perth Waterfront and City Link, which would offer tourists something exciting.

Eco Friendly Hotel Accommodation Tips

Green your Hotel Stays:

Consume less while staying overnight and be more eco friendly

Staying away in a hotel can consume a lot more waste than you might think. You might be thinking that you just sleep in the bed and leave, but there's more to the process. When you arrive in the hotel, you check in and enter your room. Once in the room, the temperature might be adjusted, the lights are turned on in every corner, the TV is left going, and all the free toiletries are scoffed up.

What can you do to lighten your load on your hotel stay?

To make your hotel stay a little greener, try out the following:

• Reuse your towels. If you're staying in a hotel more than one night, hanging your towel back on the rack universally means "I'll use it again." That way, you'll be conserving extra water and energy from washing an extra towel.


• Conserve extra water by limiting your shower time.


• Opt out of receiving a newspaper if possible. Save a tree.
  
  


• Get paperless billing for your hotel stay. You can often avoid getting a bill if you use express checkout.


• Take the stairs. If you're able, spare some electricity and walk the stairs. It's good for you!


• Don't take all of the toiletries in the room unless you really need them. Besides, the quality of the hotel toiletries isn't something that you'll want to remember when you get home!


• Bring your own food. Vending machine snacks are full of excessive packaging, not to mention they're notoriously unhealthy. Pack up snacks in reusable containers of various sizes and you'll be eating better, saving money, and doing a good green deed by avoiding all of that packaging.


• Turn down the AC or heat in your room. Crack a window if possible and get some fresh air! Turn down thermostat just a few degrees in the cold weather and you'll sleep more comfortably and save energy.


• Don't have the bedding changed unless necessary. One room's hotel bedding can often take up one normal sized washing machine!


• Instead of using disposable styrofoam coffee or water cups, bring your own reusable mug or plastic cup. It tastes better that way anyway.