Decision Support Tools: Report on Australian Tourism Industry Growth

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Australian tourism industry, focusing on decision support tools and various business aspects. It begins with an introduction highlighting the significance of tourism to the Australian economy, emphasizing the diverse attractions like the Great Barrier Reef and the initiatives taken by the tourism department. The report then delves into the nature of the travel agency business, detailing the services provided and the importance of well-trained travel agents. Different types of businesses, such as online booking, promotions, and physical offices are discussed, highlighting the dominance of online platforms. The report identifies baby boomers, newly married couples, and young people as key tourist cohorts, along with funding considerations. It further explores business ventures, including lower-cost trips and student discounts, and presents statistical data on tourism's impact on GDP and employment. The conclusion emphasizes the industry's growth and its increasing importance to the Australian economy, advocating for necessary changes to meet future demands.

Running Head: DECISION SUPPORT TOOLS
Decision Support Tools
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Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction................................................................................................................................2
2.0 Nature of the Business...............................................................................................................2
3.0 Type of Business........................................................................................................................3
4.0 Selected Cohort of Tourists.......................................................................................................4
4.1 Funding for the Tourists........................................................................................................4
5.0 Business Ventures......................................................................................................................4
6.0 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

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1.0 Introduction
One of the most important factors for the growth of the Australian economy is tourism.
Nowadays, there are various reasons for the people travelling to variety of different places. Their
work at times force them to go to various places. Other factors include education or holiday. The
diversity of different types of landscapes and regions have always attracted tourists to Australia.
The major landscapes of Australia include the rainforest, the desert of red sand and the
most importantly the Great Barrier Reef, the coral island (Ruhanen, Whitford & McLennan,
2015). The tourism department of the country has been taking several new initiatives to develop
the industry. It is worth mentioning that in 2014, the Australian GDP has been enhanced by 3
percent by the tourism industry (Reisinger & Turner, 2015).
2.0 Nature of the Business
An explicit strategy has to be adopted by the tourism industry in order to attract more
tourists to visit the country. One of the most important type of business that can be adopted on
this basis is the travel agency business. The travel agency or the travel agents provide the tourists
with facilities and services for roaming around the country. It is the duty of the travel agency or
the agents to take care of the tourists by providing them with a safe and comfortable place for
staying, providing them with proper transport when needed, planning their tours. They can
provide each of these services individually or provide them together as a package (Australia,
2014). The tourists can have the option to choose the best kind of help they need. The tourism
authorities thus have to recruit well trained travel agents who can deal with all the problems that
the tourists can face. The travel agents will also have to be well informed about all the relevant
matters such as the availability of hotels, tourist spots and transports to increase the number of

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bookings resulting in the increase in the number of tourists in the country. This will help in
proper bookings.
3.0 Type of Business
The travel agencies can adopt various types of businesses. The most important type
nowadays is online booking (Pham et al., 2013). People are very busy nowadays. Out of that
busy schedule, they find out leisure time to go on tours. It is not much possible for the people to
go in person to the booking offices and conduct all the bookings necessary. Thus, with the
availability of the online booking facility bookings can be done at any time of the day, whenever
a person is free. The connectivity with the internet is extremely helpful for the tourists to explore
all the options provided by the agencies, which they can choose from the respective agency
websites. The tourists can also have access to multiple agencies and compare the prices of the
services provided by the agencies. They can compare and choose the best agency according to
their needs and affordability (Mahadevan, 2014). Thus, in today’s world, this can be termed as
the most important type of booking process.
There should also be several offices of a tourism, so that it is easily accessible for
anybody who wants to consult the offices in person. Thus, different offices at different locations
should be available. There should also be site based offices where there will be some agents
attending the customers (Amelung & Nicholls, 2014). However, this facility has been outdone by
the online market. Everybody gets all the information necessary from the internet sources.
Another important type of tourism business is promotions. Leaflets and brochures should
be designed and distributed at random at various locations to keep the people informed about the
agency and the services provided by them. This can be done online also as the leaflets or

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pamphlets might get lost. The advertisements should be made attractive and eye soothing to
attract tourists. Attractive images of the sites should also be attached in the advertisements to
attract the tourists (Airey & Ruhanen, 2014). The hotels, transport and food benefits that the
agencies will provide should also be mentioned in the advertisements.
4.0 Selected Cohort of Tourists
The type of tourists that can be selected include baby boomers. They try to spend their
leisure by visiting the tourist spots. Tourist spots also attract the newly married couples or the
young people. The newly married couples always demand for a tourist spot in order to spend
their honeymoon abroad (Scott & Ruhanen, 2015). The young people also have a lot of energy
and interest to explore the destinations and look for adventures. Australia contains all types of
packages together. There is mountains, beaches and deserts all together in the country. Thus, it is
of high demand to the tourists. Special honeymoon suits should also be arranged for the newly
married couples in terms of hotel rooms and restaurant facilities.
4.1 Funding for the Tourists
Funding is one of the most important criteria for foreign trips. It has to be taken into
consideration that the packages offered to the tourists for the various purposes as discussed
earlier are reasonable and easily affordable by the clients. The honeymoon couples have a
tendency to arrange costly trips. Thus, it can be assumed that they have some funding to afford
for the costly trips. This is not much of a problem. Higher number of tourists are attracted by
providing them with outstanding deals, presentations, advertisements and offers (Ruhanen,
Whitford & McLennan, 2015).

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5.0 Business Ventures
The business ventures that needs to be considered by the Australian tourism agencies is
that they should be providing the trips at a lower costs. Moreover, trips to not so famous but
beautiful locations should be organized at lower prices. Trips conducted by the students of
different schools or universities should also be funded at a lower costs providing special student
discounts. These trips will mostly be to local areas (Amelung & Nicholls, 2014). This is bound to
attract more tourists and students to visit the country and thus increasing the economy of the
country.
Figure 1: Tourism Graph over the Years
The figure 1 shows the domestic tourism indicators of the country Australia. The effect of
tourism industry on the Australian GDP has been shown by the following figure 2.

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Figure 2: Tourism Affecting GDP and Employment
6.0 Conclusion
From the discussions above and the statistics provided, it can be concluded that tourism
industry is one of the growing industries in Australia and has already affected almost 4 percent of
the Australian GDP. It can be said that with the increasing years, it is going to be one of the most
important industry in Australia. A major part of the GDP is supposed to be affected by this
industry. This can be said from the increasing number of international tourists visiting the
country and domestic tourists. Thus, the industries should be doing the necessary changes in
order to meet the increasing demands properly in the near future.

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REFERENCES
Airey, D., & Ruhanen, L. (2014). Tourism policy-making in Australia: A national and state
perspective. Tourism Planning & Development, 11(2), 149-162.
Amelung, B., & Nicholls, S. (2014). Implications of climate change for tourism in
Australia. Tourism Management, 41, 228-244.
Australia, T. W. (2014). Australia’s North West: Overnight visitor fact sheet years ending
December 2011/12/13. Perth: Tourism Western Australia.
Mahadevan, R. (2014). Understanding senior self-drive tourism in Australia using a contingency
behavior model. Journal of Travel Research, 53(2), 252-259.
Pham, T. D., Bailey, G., Marshall, J., Spurr, R., & Dwyer, L. (2013). The economic impact of the
current mining boom on the Australian tourism industry. Canberra: Tourism Research
Australia.
Reisinger, Y., & Turner, L. (2015). Cultural Marketing for Asian Tourism into Australia.
In Proceedings of the 1998 Multicultural Marketing Conference (pp. 535-535). Springer,
Cham.
Ruhanen, L., Whitford, M., & McLennan, C. L. (2015). Indigenous tourism in Australia: Time
for a reality check. Tourism Management, 48, 73-83.
Scott, N., & Ruhanen, L. (2015). Tourism Queensland, Australia.