Assessing the Potential of Tropical North Queensland as a Tourist Destination

This report assesses the potential of Tropical North Queensland as a tourist destination, discussing its current position, tourism profile and products, recent changes in visitation numbers, and the objectives and strategies of the destination management plan. It also explores emerging trends in consumer travel patterns, such as the advancement of information technology, and the overdependence on Chinese visitors. The report concludes with recommendations for the destination management organization.

Running head: DESTINATION MANAGEMENT
DESTINATION MANAGEMENT
Name of the student:
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Executive summary
This report aims to assess their current position of Tropical North Queensland as the tourist
destination. This report will identify different types of opportunities for this region’s potential
tourism growth along with develop the objectives for successful future of this particular
destination as an eminent tourism product. The external trends of depending upon digital
marketing and reaching the global customer by using information technology can effectively
help the tourism organization of this place and enhance the visitation numbers in this area.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Overview of the Tropical North Queensland...................................................................................3
Location:......................................................................................................................................3
Existing tourism profile and products:........................................................................................3
Recent changes in visitation numbers:........................................................................................4
Objectives and strategies of the destination management plan:......................................................4
Emerging trends or changes in consumer travel patterns:...............................................................5
Advancement in Information Technology:..................................................................................5
Over dependence on the Chinese visitors:...................................................................................6
Strategies that the destination management organization could implement:...................................6
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................7
References:......................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction:
The aim of this report is to discuss the success of Tropical North Queensland as a tourist
destination. As the economy of this region completely depends upon the tourism factor, the
government needs to implement strategies for bringing new changes in the situation (Volgger &
Pechlaner, 2014). This report will discuss the location, products and recent changes in the
visitation numbers in this area. The Tropical North Queensland Destination Tourism Plan has
objectives and strategies in 2018. The emerging trends and strategies are also detailed in this
report.
Overview of the Tropical North Queensland
Location:
Tropical North Queensland is situated in the northern part of Queensland in Australia. It
is one of the most powerful of the tourism stories of Australia as this is the most diversely
beautiful place in the country. Tropical North Queensland includes the cities like Townsville,
Mackay and Cairns along with the Australian islands of Torres island.
Existing tourism profile and products:
Tropical North Queensland has incredible number of natural places which include Great
Barrier Reef, waterfalls, wet tropical rain forest and gorges. The tourists visit this place are
mainly nature lovers or hikers. The ruggedness of Cape York provides the experience of
wilderness expedition, the visitors can enjoy food in the treehouse restaurants, they can watch
sunrise or sunset in Mount Cook and hike Bartle Frere and explore huge number of corals and
turtles in the Beaver Reef Dive Site. Tropical North Queensland allows the visitors to witness
one of the word’s best preserved and oldest lava tube system, experience the indigenous culture,

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enjoy action water sport in Cairns, skydive to get the best view of the Great Barrier Reef from
the above. In addition to this the place offers rafting, driving in the most beautiful forest routes
and eat some of the most desired see foods in this place.
Recent changes in visitation numbers:
With the development of the transport system and accommodation, this area has recorded
huge visitation. However, the recent changes reveal that despite the annual expenditure has been
increased, the number of total visitors in 2017 was 2.7 million but this was 4.2% less than the
previous years (Tropicnow.com.au, 2019).
Objectives and strategies of the destination management plan:
The destination tourism management plan of Tropical North Queensland has detailed
their agenda from 2018 to 2020. The strategic direction moves towards the unification of the
industry so that the destination can be one of the most inspiring and attractive nature-based
tourist destinations within 2020. This two-year plan therefore helps the Tropical North
Queensland to move quickly in the competitive and fast-changing world and ensure itself to be
the one where the people around the world will desire to visit. The organization has the vision to
deliver an innovating and world-class destination marketing. It is trusted and has the mission to
collaborate with the allies and ensure the tourism marketing of the region archives the
expenditure of $ 3.5 billion within 2020 (Tourism Tropical North Queensland, 2018).
Tropical North Queensland is a gateway to numerous accessible experiences which are
mainly based on the beauty of nature in the Great Barrier Reef, oldest rainforest of the earth,
longest sea beach and indigenous culture. With the backup of the ancient culture, the place is
shared by its passionate locals. The organization TTNQ has strategized to master on the specialty

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of the region, working collaboratively with its partners like Wet Tropics Management Authority
and Go Fish Australia, promoting public relations activities, providing digital leverage to both
the guests as well as the locals thus improve membership, finance as well as resources and
continuously improve the situation every month.
Emerging trends or changes in consumer travel patterns:
Advancement in Information Technology:
In the last two decades, the advancement of information technology has brought great
benefits and transformation in the tourism industry. The travel websites are providing platform
which is accessible to the tourists around the world. Through these websites, the visitors are
being capable to book holidays, hotel accommodations, car rentals, guided tour package and
most important of all the airline booking system us also available in these websites (Volgger &
Pechlaner, 2014). Through these online services the tourist destinations are connecting directly
with the customers diminishing the roles of the agents in this entire process. This process enables
the consumers to plan heir own holidays more conveniently and expertly in one hand and they
can choose from the best deals available. The website operators along with the tourist service
providers ensure that they work under competition (Pearce, 2015).
With the development of information technology, the tourist service providers and
website operators aim to differentiate themselves in the completion thus they make themselves
increasingly appealing for the customers (Mariani et al., 2014). In this process, price always
remains the chief differentiating factor that motivates the customers to choose the quality survive
within their budget. They are also attracted by the loyalty programs or coupons and choose the
most popular sites to spend their holidays (Hartman, 2016). The role of social media in the
destination tourism is important as the tourists share their views of the destination or what the

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opportunities or challenges in the place. Therefore, the social media has become the critic in its
own rights and the customers do not have to depend on the recommendations of the tour advisors
or operators (Wachowiak, 2016). The recommendations of the past tourists will influence the
decision of the potential visitors of that place. In case of Tropical North Queensland, the online
or direct marketing has not yet reached up to the mark therefore, the visitor distribution in the
case of the international visitors has been limited yet.
Over dependence on the Chinese visitors:
In case of Australia be it the Tropical North Queensland or the other places, the tourism
organizations mostly depend upon the Chinese outboard tourists. This is due to the fact that the
number of tourists from China helps to form a very important portion of tourism earnings. Hence
the Chinese tourists are able to exert pressure on the tourism development organization of the
places. According to the data published in Scutt (2019), China has become the largest source of
short-term visitor arrival in Australia. More than 0.2 million Chinese visitors arrived in the
different places of Australia for vacation only in February 2018 which is a record till the end of
2017-2018 financial year. This have affected the economy of Australia quite positively and the
government has started to identify destination places to invest more for development. However,
along with this opportunity, there are challenges related to this trend. For example, when
America decided for deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in
the nation of South Korea, the friend nation China had imposed a group tour ban upon the
outbound tourists in 2017. This resulted in a reduction of almost 60% from 2016. In the case of
Australia, this over dependency on the Chinese tourist may lead to have risk (Scutt, 2019).

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Strategies that the destination management organization could implement:
In order to overcome these issues and get the best support from the advancement of
information technology, the marketers need to follow some very important strategies.
First, they need to depend more upon the advanced online marketing process which will
help the organization to share its destination story to the customers in a broader way. As the plan
mentions that in the total visitors of 2.7 million in the Tropical North Queensland, only 897,000
were the international visitors (Tourism Tropical North Queensland, 2018). This reveal that the
company must strengthen the digital marketing strategy more efficiently. The organization needs
to work with a content marketer and ensure the database is clean (Cox, Gyrd-Jones and Gardiner,
2014). The importance of content marketer is essential as the tourists like to hear about the
location from the exclusive and reliable source. Therefore, this organization frequently need to
publish materials in the social media platforms or other online platforms so that the travelers get
proper idea of the place of their interest. For ensuring clean database, the organization needs to
rely on the information of their clients and develop comprehensive packages or offers.
Secondly, the organization must reduce the overdependency on the travelers from one
country only so that in case any political or social issues arise, the tourism industry of Australia
does not suffer hugely. By giving the website a global reach, the organization of Tropical North
Queensland will be able to decentralize the focus on the tourists from different countries
(Wachowiak, 2016). In addition to this, the strategy of promoting the region as eco-tourism and
adventure travel will attract the young customer segment.

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Conclusion:
Therefore, it can be concluded that the Tropical North Queensland Destination Tourism
needs to focus on the recent changes in the number of visitors and identify the reasons for failing
to achieve the goals of accommodation. The Australian tourism industry needs to invest more in
the online marketing strategy that will reduce the over dependency on the tourists of one
particular nation. However, the organization has objective to achieve the expenditure of $ 3.5
billion in marketing within 2020, it must invest in this process to get the desired position.

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References:
Cox, N., Gyrd-Jones, R. and Gardiner, S., 2014. Internal brand management of destination
brands: Exploring the roles of destination management organisations and
operators. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 3(2), pp.85-95.
Hartman, K. (2016). Destination management in cross-border regions. In Tourism and
borders (pp. 109-130). Routledge.
Mariani, M. M., Buhalis, D., Longhi, C., & Vitouladiti, O. (2014). Managing change in tourism
destinations: Key issues and current trends. Journal of Destination Marketing &
Management, 2(4), 269-272.
Pearce, D. G. (2015). Urban management, destination management and urban destination
management: a comparative review with issues and examples from New
Zealand. International Journal of Tourism Cities, 1(1), 1-17.
Scutt, D. (2019). More Chinese tourists are visiting Australia than ever before. Retrieved from
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/australia-holiday-china-tourism-arrivals-2018-4
Tropicnow.com.au. (2019). Tourism numbers drop but visitor spending goes up. Retrieved from
https://www.tropicnow.com.au/2018/march/28/tourism-numbers-drop-but-visitor-
spending-goes-up.html
Tourism Tropical North Queensland. (2018). Tropical North Queensland Destination Tourism
Plan OCTOBER 2018 (pp. 1-16). Queensland: Tourism Tropical North Queensland.
Retrieved from

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https://cdn2-teq.queensland.com/~/media/0a155e2bd3124b52b11e930c27193765.ashx?
vs=1&d=20181102T094647
Volgger, M., & Pechlaner, H. (2014). Requirements for destination management organizations in
destination governance: Understanding DMO success. Tourism Management, 41, 64-75.
Wachowiak, H. (Ed.). (2016). Tourism and borders: contemporary issues, policies and
international research. Routledge.