Issues Influencing Tourist Experience in Australia

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