Discussion Paper: Regional Destination Tourism Planning in Australia

This discussion paper, prepared for Tourism Australia, addresses the critical issue of climate change's impact on regional tourism, specifically in Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland. The paper highlights the opportunities, issues, and challenges facing the sector, including rising tem...Read More

Running Head: REGIONAL DESTINATION TOURISM PLANNING
REGIONAL DESTINATION TOURISM PLANNING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1REGIONAL DESTINATION TOURISM PLANNING
Executive Summary:
The main aim of this research paper is to plan out policies regarding the situation of climate
changes as well as enhance the quality of tourism of regional places in Australia. Therefore,
the plan will be consisting the factors related to conserve and preserve natural resources in
order to maintain a sustainable growth in the tourism business in Australia. Therefore, the
regional tourism policies will be constructed on the factors like intervention of government of
Australia as well as the stakeholder’s contribution to the economy related to tourism business
in Australia. However, the main challenges, opportunities and threats have been well
described as to follow the implementation of the policies.

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Table of Contents
1. Position Statement:.............................................................................................................3
2. Background context:...........................................................................................................3
3. Statement of need:..............................................................................................................6
4. Scope of the proposed plan:................................................................................................9
5. Proposed process:.............................................................................................................11

3REGIONAL DESTINATION TOURISM PLANNING
1. Position Statement:
I work for Tourism Australia. My workplace is mainly located in Northern New South
Wales and Southern Queensland (http://www.tourism.australia.com).
The plan of tourism is mainly focused on the local places, where the regional
destinations are explored.
The tourism agency plays a vital role in planning tourism in regional sites and
exploring all the destination of a particular region in Australia.
The organizational values of Tourism Australia are focused on the factors to provide
unity, positivity, genuine, commercial, and innovation to enhance its workplace culture.
The internal and external influences of the organization are the destination’s appeal
and uniqueness in growth factors as well as the online booking systems helped in driving a
healthy domestic tourism market.
The specific goals and objectives of the policies of Tourism Australia is to make
efforts on enhancing climate condition of Northern New South Wales and Southern
Queensland. The regions are facing record drought, causing warmer winter season as well
as resulting forest fires. The climatologists suggest that if the climate of southern part of
Australia cannot be recovered within few years the bushfires may rise and cause higher
evaporation percentage and that is a bigger threat for tourism in the regions (Hobday et al.
2016). Therefore, my plan will address the climate change issues that are affecting the
regional tourism in Australia to enhance the climate condition of regional areas like
Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland.

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2. Background context:
There are many opportunities, issues and challenges that needs to be faced in the
tourism sector in order to maintain a sustainable growth.
Opportunities – The regional tourism has a relative proximity to the Asia pacific countries.
Therefore, people from this countries drive more visitors in the tourism sector of Australia.
Asia is an emerging market in terms of tourism, where people like to visit and explore the
regional areas of a country and new cultural backgrounds.
Issues – Climate change will directly impact on Australian tourism and on the economic
benefits that tourism generates through the loss or degradation of tourist attractions, the costs
of adaptation, and replacement costs for capital infrastructure. The rising temperature of
Southern Queensland will significantly affect the tourism and hospitality sector of that
region, and that is the main issue that needs to be resolved.
Challenges – The main challenge Australian Tourism facing, is the lack of visitors from
European countries due to the recession of the visitors. That affected the Australian tourism
sector mostly. However, the visitors also mentioned the degradation of the tourist places due
to climate changes (Jacobs et al. 2016).
The main geographic focus is to enhance the quality of places and conserve the
natural vegetation as well as the theme of tourism places. There are mainly five key aspects
that affects the geographic focus of a place. One of them is climate change that affects the
tourist spots in regional areas. Therefore, the conservation of the places and enhancement of
the natural resources is a necessary issue the Australian government needs to focus on and
implement new policies to reduce the disastrous changes in the vegetation and enhance the
climate. Climate change is affecting the tourism sector of Australia (Jopp et al. 2015).
Therefore, it needs to be reduced as soon as possible.

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The growing number of visitors helps to enhance the income of the regional people as
well as growth of the economy of Australia. Economic growth of a country helps to create
more employment services. That may help in creating more services to the tourism industry
as well as impacts on the tourist places as well. The factors like visitor numbers, income and
employment is relevant to the topic of climate change affecting the places and regional
tourism in Australia. The growth of tourism industry brings forth more visitors and that
results in impacting the natural resources in terms of pollution, congestion, loss of cultural
identities and so on.
The main issue drivers in a changing climate condition of regional places are number
of visitors, pollution, seasonal tourism, congestion, damages in natural resources, defecting
the wildlife atmosphere. These are considered as the basic issues that impacts on the natural
resources that may lead on to climate changes (Prideaux and Thompson 2017). There are
more aspects that needs to be responded like the human resources, disliking the tourist’s
culture may lead on to loss of cultural identities, lack of knowledge regarding the hospitality
of tourists in a regional places can affect the tourism sector. However, all of these factors
have a deep effect on the changing climate conditions of a regional tourist places.
Some major examples regarding this research is based on the climate changes of
regional places are as follows –
Australia is getting warmer due to its major climate changes and the country is expected to
get warmer as 5 to 9°C by the year 2090. The major reason would be the defecting all the
natural resources in order to make robust growth in industrial sectors. Tourism sector has a
greater impact on the natural health of the forest and wildlife that leads to a long-term effect
in the climate of a region (Turner et al. 2016).

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The forests of Australia experiences fires season where plants and trees are dried up and ideal
for causing bushfires. The bushfires are getting longer every year, causing larger amount of
emission than before as well as affecting the regional forest places that can be considered as a
tourist spot.
The number of tourists is also a bigger issue in affecting the atmosphere that gradually
impacts on the climate of a place. The engagement of more people in course of time affects
the culture of a place and increases the chance of polluting the nature.
The changing behaviour of wildlife animals in the forests due to the forest safari rides are
also affecting the natural habitats in many ways. Therefore, the wildlife needs to be protected
as well in order to conserve and protect the natural vegetation.
Climate change can be said is the biggest issue of this world at present time. This is
said to be one of the biggest natural threats a region or area can experience. Therefore, the
changing climate is affecting Australia in many aspects from economic to political, health to
education as well as one of the biggest industries of Australia, tourism. . Therefore, the rising
problem need to be addressed and solved by inaugurating new federal policies regarding the
tourist sector to maintain, conserve the natural sources in order to enhance the quality of
society, employment and economic benefits due to regional tourism of Australia. The new
policies are needed as to manage the problems with the changing time and condition of
nature. If the climate changes cannot be controlled, gradually all other policies regarding
every sector will be of no worth in having.

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3. Statement of need:
A tourism plan is needed considering the changes in climate to enhance the
experience of tourists, mitigate carbon emission happen due to the industry and keep the
government ready for extraordinary changes in the nature. Henceforth, government of
Australia needs to cooperate in this planning process to make sustainable changes that can be
effective in drawing revenues to the stakeholders of the tourism business (Moyle et al. 2018).
The Tourism 2020 plan made by the government made no changes in making a climate
change friendly policy to cut carbon emission and improve the challenges of regional tourism
sector (Brown et al. 2016). Therefore, a plan to reduce climate changing factors are very
needed to omit the possible threats of tourism in Australia.
The main role of Government of Australia is plan out tourism policies regarding the
climate changes happening all around the regions of Australia. However, the all the policies
planned out by government so far is mainly focused on economic development of tourism
sector only. The government plays a significant role in the discussion regarding the economic
challenges the tourism sector will face if the policies regarding climate change is not
implemented (Jacobs et al., 2016). The recent researches related to the rise of global warming
issues have stated clearly that if policies are not revised according to climate change every
sector will face problems in the near future. Thus, the tourism ministry needs to revise their
policies in order to reduce the climate change effects in near future, to mitigate the climate
change effects in places where the most tourism events occur.
The tourism sector is much affected by the climate changes happening in Australia.
The stakeholders related to tourism industry are also affected as well. Mainly the people of
the organization conducting the tourism events, most of them are from the local regions of
tourist spots. The climate change is mainly affecting the regional areas and its people. The
rise of temperature in winter season, longer bushfire season, growth of humidity effecting the

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climate of Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland. Resulting less visitors in
the places, due to lack of natural beauty and comfort. However, the stakeholders can solve the
problems of having lesser tourists by urging the government to make policies in order to
mitigate the climate changes, to ensure a better future for the tourism industry as well as the
regions of Australia.
The key trends that influence the issue regarding the climate change of Australia are
as follows,
Rising Carbon Emission,
Damages of permanent historical landmarks,
Denouement of natural resources due to overcrowding,
Loss of Cultural Identities,
Disturbance created in wildlife,
Pollution due to excessive use of transport in the remote locations.
The main challenge regarding the climate change policy is mainly focused on tourism
industry and destinations. The main risk is based on the denouement of natural resources
which is the main infrastructure of tourism business sector. Therefore, the changing climate
can result upon the factors leading to dynamic shift of factors leading the changes happen.
Secondly, implementing policies to promote more energy efficient tourism programs to
reduce the carbon emission in the tourism regions. The striving factor here is to conserve
biodiversity as well as maintain all the tourism policies implemented before.
The Government’s role is to help the people in improving the knowledge regarding
the climate change processes. Therefore, the implementation processes can be considered as

9REGIONAL DESTINATION TOURISM PLANNING
for our own good. Here, in this case the policies of climate changes needs to provide a
regulatory framework. Therefore, they are as follows -
The policies are needed to be relied conducting risk assessments as well as develop plans to
make adaptive decisions (Jacobs et al., 2016).
Climate change may result in difficulties to get drinking water and may result in making
increase of waste water.
The natural resources like forests and water bodies are needed to be preserved as they play a
great role in the climate of a region.
Therefore, the intervention of government is needed to save the industry of regional sectors
by implementing policies. Here, in this case, Northern New South Wales and Southern
Queensland are getting affected due to many climate changing reasons explained earlier.
Therefore, the problems have affected the tourist sector by gradually decreasing number of
tourists. In course of time, all of the regions will be facing the same problem in future if not
solved within.
4. Scope of the proposed plan:
The most possible policies for reducing the climate change in order to enhance the
quality of tourism in Australia should include the facts like, restrictions, maintained taxes,
trading schemes, maintaining a specific number of international visitors per year as well as
increase the cost of tourism. In this way, the government can enhance the quality of tourism
they provide as well as raise funds to preserve natural resources as well as maintain the
environmental changes.
The instruments might be appropriate for my plan are as follows, Tourist
environmental tax, Access fees, Eco labels, Quotas and Zoning. These instruments can be of

10REGIONAL DESTINATION TOURISM PLANNING
help in making climate change policies regarding regional tourism in Australia. The tourist
environment tax can help bring more revenue to implement those necessary steps in making
the policies come in action (Petitpierre et al. 2016). Whereas, quotas can help in making
limited visitor in a specific region for specific period of time that may initially result in
reduction of revenues, however in course of time the specific period of time will be beneficial
for the tourist stakeholders generating more revenues than the previous times.
The factors like money and government action is very much needed in order to
implement a new policy to conserve a natural vegetation or region to enhance its climate. The
government will provide the necessary actions needed, as per the officials (Dredge and
Jenkins 2016). Money will be generated in order to implementation of the plans. The
government of Australia as well as the stakeholders will take the process in making
partnership to progress on the enhancement process.
The main resources required for implementation of the policies are geomorphological
resources, climate based resources, hydrographical resources and bio-geographical resources
(Turner et al. 2016).
The advantages of the policy are, it is planned with an ambition to protect the nature,
enhance the natural resources as well as preserve the forests for the sole purpose of reducing
the climate changes. The climate changes can ruin all other sectors within a small period of
time. Therefore, the policies will be guided to make the necessary changes in order to bring
back the visitors from all around the globe (Fatorić et al. 2017).
With advantages, the disadvantages comes as well, the main disadvantage of the
policies will be the reducing visitors, increasing cost in implementing those policies and they
may affect in the market share and revenues generated through tourism for some initial years.

11REGIONAL DESTINATION TOURISM PLANNING
The policies can be provided and directed by the government officials as well as the
stakeholders who are in general the people who reside in the specific tourism centric areas
and local people. The climate change is a long term process, that impacts on a region with a
long period of time. Henceforth, the changes of policies can result in showing effect after
several years of practicing those policies only. Thus, it is long termed process.
5. Proposed process:
The planning process is based on reduction of climate changes of regions of Australia.
The process is based on the facts related to reducing Rising Carbon Emission, Damages of
permanent historical landmarks, Denouement of natural resources due to overcrowding, Loss
of Cultural Identities (Turner et al. 2016).
The planning process will be implemented with the intervention of Government of
Australia and the respective stakeholders with necessary rules and regulation of tourism plan.
The Tourism Minister of Australia will be consulted regarding the implementation of
the policies.
The Government of Australia with the help of Tourism Australia and its stakeholders
will implement the policies.
It will be reviewed on the basis of experiencing changes in the natural resources and
the weather. However, climate change is a long process of average condition of weather.
The success of climate change policies cannot be judged on the basis of few days,
months, rather they are based on the development of climate condition of years. Therefore,
the implementation of the policies can be judged only after practicing it for few years at least.

12REGIONAL DESTINATION TOURISM PLANNING
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