Issues Influencing Tourist Experience in Australia

This paper analyzes the contemporary issues that influence tourism in Australia and investigates the practices that operators use to evaluate customer experience. The issues include low qualifications of service providers, safety issues, and natural disasters. The practices used to evaluate tourist experience include customer satisfaction questionnaires, online customer reviews, and scorecards.

Running Head: ISSUES INFLUENCING TOURIST EXPERIENCE 1
Issues influencing tourist experience and Evaluation of tourist experience: a case study of
Australia
Name
Institution

ISSUES INFLUENCING TOURIST EXPERIENCE 2
Introduction
Tourism is the operation and commercial organization of holidays and visits to places of
interests. It includes activities of people traveling to areas away from their typical environment
for purposes of leisure, business and other reasons which include exposure and exploration.
Furthermore, tourism comprises of a collection of service and other industries that offers
traveling experience, eating and draining, accommodation, hospitality services, and retail shop
services to people who travel long distances (Krukowska & Świeca, 2018). In Australia, the
tourism industry is an important industry with a significant contribution to the economy. Recent
statistics show that the industry has a contribution of 3% to the Australian gross domestic
product in the fiscal year 2016-2017. The tourism in the country is categorized into local tourism
and international tourism. While some people view Australia as a tourism destination, some
issues influence the tourism experience in the country (Travel & Tourism in Australia, 2016).
Furthermore, the players in the industry also have practices that help in the evaluation of the
tourist experience. This paper analyses the contemporary issues that influence tourism in
Australia. It also investigates the practices that operators use to evaluate customer experience.
Issues influencing tourist experience products in Australia
Nations that are tourist destinations all over the world work towards improving the tourist
experiences in their countries. This is because the tourists come to consume the experiences.
Australia is not left behind in these efforts. However, some issues influence the experience of the
tourists in Australia. Some of the issues include low qualifications of service providers, safety
issues and natural disasters.

ISSUES INFLUENCING TOURIST EXPERIENCE 3
Qualifications of service providers
The qualifications of key personnel in the tourism industry in Australia determine the
quality of the service and products. It is therefore vital to determine how quality standards of the
service are set and who sets the standards. Australia experiences an increasing number of tour
operators whose main business is to promote their tours. The tours have drivers who also couple
up as tour guides. In some cases, the tours have volunteer tour guides accompany the drivers.
Majority of the tour guides have no tour guide training, and for those who have the tanning, it is
at the minimum level. Despite the tour guides and site guides having factual information about
their role in the industry, they are deficient of knowledge on a wider number of issues in the
industry such as environmental and cross-cultural issues (Torland, 2016). The lack of knowledge
in these areas may lead to inappropriate behavior such as providing wrong information based on
their personal opinion rather than facts.
Safety issues
The second issue is the safety concerns of the tour guides and the drivers. Tourism in
Australia is in both the urban and rural areas and therefore the tour guides, and the drives have to
travel in both settings. The Australian tours are reported to travel long distances to remote areas
at high speeds. This affects the driver guides ability to provide a well-structured commentary
with accurate information while the main focus in on driving to ensure that they cover all the
scheduled destinations. The driver may also be distracted from driving while trying to provide
information to the tourists. It put not only the life of the drive but also that of the passengers in

ISSUES INFLUENCING TOURIST EXPERIENCE 4
danger. The drive is therefore left to choose between answering questions from the tourists and
focusing on the road (Kerr, 2018).
Natural disasters
Natural disasters are occurrences that are beyond human control under available
knowledge. While the government of Australia makes efforts to minimize the damage done by
disasters, the damage extends to the tourism industry. Tourist’s the trips with expectations of
exiting and memorable moments. Majority of tourist aim at creating happy memories. When it
comes to Australia, the timing of making tours to specific regions must be strategic to ensure
safety from any impending natural disaster occurrence. Some of the natural disasters that have
experience in the county in the recent past include bushfires, floods, extreme weather events and
cyclones (Handme, Ladds, & Magee, 2018). These natural disasters have a bearing on the
tourist’s decisions on when to tour certain regions of the country and also creates a comparison
basis with other tourist destinations.
Practices used to evaluate tourist experience
Feedback is essential for any business to allow evaluation of strengths and weakness
(Fenton, Young, & Johnson, 1998). Given the issues that influence tourist experience in
Australia, it is only logical that the service and product providers in the tourism industry of
Australia conduct a regular evaluation on themselves to enable them to fill some of the loopholes
in the industry. One of the practices that players in the tourism industry in Australia put in place
is the use of customer satisfaction questionnaires. The questioners help the service provides

ISSUES INFLUENCING TOURIST EXPERIENCE 5
capture key information about the views of the tourists on the services they provide. Another
method that is commonly applied is the use of online customer reviews. In this case, the
customers are expected to leave comments about their experiences on the service and product
provides websites. The use of customer complaint registry also adds to the list of the tools of
evaluation that are commonly used in the county. The providers use customer complaint registers
to capture all issues raised with the management by the tourists during their stay or the tours. The
complaints recorded play a big role in ensuring that issues raised are addressed to improve on
service and product delivery to the tourists. Furthermore, some of the players in the industry also
have well-designed scorecards to help them in self-evaluation. Keeping of the scorecard may not
be an accurate measure of tourist experiences it is entirely done by the workers of the service of
the product providing entity. It is, therefore, open to bias (Fenton, Young, & Johnson, 1998).
Conclusion
Tourism provides people with opportunities to visit and explore new places during their
time of leisure. Despite Australia having attractive tourist attraction sites in the country, local and
international tourists make tourism decisions based on some factors. Some of the issues affecting
the tourism industry in the country influence tourism experience. Some of these issues include;
security concerns, inadequately trained personnel in the industry and natural disasters. With the
knowledge of existing challenges in the players in the tourism industry have developed practices
that enable evaluate tourist experiences to allow them to make adjustments where necessary and
where possible. Some of the practices put in place by the service and product providers are the
use of the questionnaire, online reviews, and scorecards. The solution to natural disasters might
not be found through these practices. However, the methods are vital for humanly possible
adjustments with the aim of making tourist experience in Australia better.

ISSUES INFLUENCING TOURIST EXPERIENCE 6
References
Fenton, D. M., Young, M., & Johnson, V. Y. (1998). Re-Presenting the Great Barrier Reef to
Tourists: Implications for Tourist Experience and Evaluation of Coral Reef
Environments. Leisure Sciences, 20(3), 177. Retrieved from
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Handmer, J., Ladds, M., & Magee, L. (2018). Updating the costs of disasters in Australia.
Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 33(2), 40–46. Retrieved from
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Kerr, A. (2018). Rocks, Ridges, And Rivers: Geological Wonders of Banff, Yoho, and Jasper
National Parks. A Roadside Tour Guide. Geoscience Canada, 45(1), 63–65.
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direct=true&db=s3h&AN=131247224&site=ehost-live

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Torland, M. (2016). Managing Emotions at Work: Adventure Tour Leaders’ Application of
Emotional Labor. Annual International Conference on Human Resource Management &
Professional Development for the Digital Age, 14–21. https://doi.org/10.5176/2251-
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