Tourism Australia: Business and Marketing Plan for Sydney Tourism

This report presents a business and marketing plan for Tourism Australia, focusing on the development and promotion of Sydney as a premier tourist destination. The report begins with an executive summary and table of contents, followed by an introduction outlining the structure of the plan. A SWOT analysis identifies Sydney's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats within the tourism sector. The core of the report details business and marketing strategies for destination development, management, and marketing. These strategies include enhancing conference facilities, promoting cruise ship tourism, improving infrastructure, and leveraging digital marketing. The report then provides estimated costs for the proposed investments and outlines a timeline for implementation. The author describes their role as an assistant manager in Tourism Australia's online marketing division. Finally, the report highlights the benefits of the proposal, emphasizing the significant economic contributions of the tourism sector to Sydney and NSW, before concluding with a summary of the plan's key elements.

Running Head: Tourism Australia1
Tourism Australia - Sydney
Student’s Name
Professor’s Name
Course Name

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Executive summary
The tourism sector has a huge impact on the economy of Australia. People are undertaking
domestic and international travel for a number of reasons ranging from holidays, leisure,
education, and business. In the last two decades the international travellers visiting Australia
have almost doubled in number. Tourism is expected to grow further with a change in the
composition of the travellers as the tourists include increasing number of visitors from Asian
countries especially, India and China (Xin, Tribe, Chambers, 2013).
Sydney is one of most favoured tourist destinations in Australia, but in the recent years it has
been facing challenges locally, nationally, and globally. Tourism Australia is an Australian
Government’s corporate entity, which has been formed with the main purpose of making
Australia one of the best tourist destinations across the world. In collaboration with the
government of NSW, tourism Australia is striving to diversify, grow, and sustain Sydney’s
tourism sector and maximize the city’s visitation potential (Newsome, Moore, Dowling,
2012).

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary 2
Introduction: Structure 4
Estimated Costs for the Business and Marketing Plan 8
Proposed Timeline for Implementation 9
My involvement in the project 10
Benefits of the Proposal 10
Conclusion 11

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Introduction: Structure
SWOT analysis of Sydney as a tourist destination
Strengths:
 Sydney is a city with rich cultural heritage and lots of places of tourist attraction.
Besides it also has a versatile and distinctive geography which makes it an attractive
tourist spot (Miller, Rathouse, Scarles, Holmes, & Tribe, 2010).
 Sydney is also recognized as an iconic city because of attractions like sporting events,
festivals, and its cosmopolitan aura (Newsome, Moore, Dowling, 2012).
 Besides a beautiful coastline, the city is located close to green parks and national
parks which appeals to the leisure travellers and wild-life explorers (Newsome,
Moore, Dowling, 2012).
 The city boasts of international brand names in the hotel industry and also has
backpacker and hostel type accommodations, apartment type, bed & breakfast type,
and also holiday homes to cater to the needs of all kinds of travellers (Economic
Contribution of Tourism to NSW 2015-16, n.d.).
Weakness:
 The city is relatively expensive and it takes a lot of time to travel to the city, which
sometimes discourages travellers from Europe and America from visiting Sydney
(Economic Contribution of Tourism to NSW 2015-16, n.d.).
 Sydney’s airport infrastructure is almost full to its capacity therefore many
international airlines do not connect to it directly (Tourism Action Plan - Home - City
of Sydney, n.d.).
Opportunities

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 The biggest opportunity for Sydney is the focus of the Australian government to
invest in developing the tourist sector in Sydney under its tourism plan 2020 (Tourism
Action Plan - Home - City of Sydney, n.d.).
 The increasing use of social media platforms by the government of Sydney to
popularize it as a tourist destination across the world (Buckley, 2012).
 Increase in the number of tourists from Asian countries like India and China
(Seetaram, 2012).
Threats
 Weakening of Australian dollar against the American dollar has negatively affected
the revenues of the tourism industry (Seetaram, 2012).
 There is an increase in competition from other tourist based economies like Malaysia,
Singapore, India, and more (Tourism Action Plan - Home - City of Sydney, n.d.).
 Increase in domestic competition with Melbourne becoming a popular tourist
attraction as the cultural and arts centre of Australia (City of Sydney - Council –
Home, n.d.).
 Changes in legislation affect the tourism sector. For example, in 2013 the Chinese
legislation that disallowed ‘shopping-tours’ affected the tourist industry in Australia
as shopping tours by Chinese travellers were a big component of Australia’s tourism
(Ivanov & Webster, 2013).
Business and Marketing strategies for developing Sydney’s tourism
To make Sydney one of the best world-wide attractions and attract more and varied number
of tourist, the Tourism Australia along with the government of NSW will have to focus on
three major fronts. These are destination development, destination management, and
destination marketing.

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Destination development: Business events and conferences are major revenue earners for a
tourism city. To improve the value of the city as a business tourism destination there should
be focus at developing the Sydney entertainment and Convention centre and improve the
quality size, and responsiveness of the conference, concert, convention, and exhibition
infrastructure to ensure that Sydney can be a in a lucrative position to secure the international
and domestic events of large scale in the next 5 years (Apostolopoulos, Leivadi, Yiannakis
2013).
The cruise ship tourism is gaining momentum among the leisure and business tourists
worldwide and provides a big opportunity for Sydney tourism industry. Developing
partnerships with the international and domestic cruise liners to manage and encourage
passenger cruise ship arrivals at Sydney will work to increase Sydney’s tourism profile
(Dredge & Jamal, 2013).
Develop strategies to enhance the tourism infrastructure within Sydney’s village precincts to
offer the tourists unique and authentic experiences of the cultural life of Australia outside the
city centre (Mowforth, & Munt, 2015).
Destination management: One of the important aspects of enhancing the value of Sydney as
a preferred tourist city is to enhance the visitors’ experience of the city. The population of the
city has been steadily growing and there is growing pressure on the transportation facilities,
cleanliness of the city, and perceptions regarding tourist safety in the last few years
(Ruhanen, 2012). There should be focus on increasing the range and reach of public transport
facilities available for the tourists and the ease of accessing these services. The frequency of
public transport like buses should be increased and hours of operation should also be
increased to late night (Dwyer, Edwards, Mistilis, Roman, Scott, 2009).

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With the increasing influx of visitors the level of maintenance and cleansing of the city also
needs to be improved in the streets, tourist sites, and in the public domain. To improve the
perception safety CCTV camera network could be expanded to cover more areas working in
collaboration with the Police department and the local government (Mok, Sparks,
Kadampully, 2013).
There should be an investment to develop the cycled path networks in the city that would
allow the tourists to cycle around Sydney and connect with other bike networks to visit
destinations like Centennial park, Bondi beach and others. This would also promote green
tourism as one of the highlights of the city (Miller, Rathouse, Scarles, Holmes, & Tribe,
2010).
Destination marketing: To market Sydney as the favoured tourist destination a brand
strategy for Sydney that focuses on attracting the tourists from its prime target markets like
India and China (Seetaram, 2012).
The marketing strategy should focus on the increased use of digital promotion and marketing
through social media networks like twitter, facebook and Google+. These websites can be
used to post photographs of Sydney’s tourist spots and cultural highlights. These can also be
used to provide information to the visitors on the best places to stay, upcoming events, tourist
destinations, city tours and regional tours (Mok, Sparks, Kadampully, 2013).
Produce the advertising and marketing material in collaboration with the cultural
organizations, arts clubs, and the local businesses which promote the distinctive character of
the 10 villages of the city and the history and culture of the Aboriginal people (Ma &
Hassink, 2013).

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Encourage return visits by promoting Sydney as a destination of choice for business
conventions and conferences by developing partnerships with the organizers of these events
to maximize the promotional and marketing opportunities which target both the international
and interstate delegates (Hall, 2009).
Estimated Costs for the Business and Marketing Plan
Assuming that the state of the economy and the tourism industry remains constant in the
coming years, Tourism Australia would need to invest in the infrastructure development and
marketing plan for the improving the tourism industry in Sydney. The estimated cost of the
project would be:
Proposed investment plan Estimated cost
Infrastructure development $ 12 million
Developing regional community
tourism
$ 3 million
Business events funding to
support the Sydney Convention
and Visitors Bureau
$ 10 million
Marketing and sales expenditure
(national)
$ 3.5 million
Marketing and sales expenditure
(international)
$ 5 million
Digital marketing program
(world-wide)
$ 2.5
Marketing of nature based
tourism
$ 2.5 million

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Marketing and development of
Cruise ship tourism
$ 2.5 million
Skill development programs in
the tourism industry
$ 2 million
Increased payroll expenditure $ .75 million
Proposed Timeline for Implementation
Proposed investment plan Proposed timeline
Infrastructure development 2 years
Developing regional community tourism 2 years
Business events funding to support the
Sydney Convention and Visitors Bureau
2 years
Marketing and sales expenditure (national) 1 year
Marketing and sales expenditure
(international)
1 year
Digital marketing program (world-wide) 1 year
Marketing of nature based tourism 1 year
Marketing and development of Cruise ship
tourism
1 year
Skill development programs in the tourism
industry
Every year
Increased payroll expenditure Every year
My involvement in the project

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I have been appointed as an assistant manager in the online marketing division of the
marketing and sales department of Tourism Australia which is specifically dealing with the
development of Sydney as the most favoured tourist destination of Australia for the
international clients. The social media platform is one of the most cost effective ways of
promoting world-wide tourism and tapping into the new markets. The online booking
industry contributes approximately 50% to tourism industry worldwide every year
(Mowforth, & Munt, 2015). People can book customized experiences within their budget.
My job includes looking for best possible avenues to export Sydney’s tourism market to the
target markets of the South Asian countries. My team is also concerned with developing
strategies for a destination branding for Sydney and collating the feedbacks from the visitors
on social media sites that would help in improving the quality of our services.
Benefits of the Proposal
Tourism industry in NSW generates the maximum revenue for the state and the economic
contribution of the industry is more that the agriculture, fishing, and forestry. Sydney alone
accounts for almost 50 percent of the national and international tourist traffic every year and
accounts for almost 63% of NSW’s tourism business (Economic Contribution of Tourism to
NSW 2015-16, n.d.). The tourism sector is also the biggest employer in Sydney with a large
number of people directly and indirectly employed in the industry. The tourism industry also
supports many of the local businesses around the city which include cafes, shops, hotels,
market gardeners, laundries, hotels, and many more (City of Sydney - Council – Home, n.d.).
Sydney has been facing competition in the last few years from the other national tourist
destinations like Melbourne and also from the other countries which are developing their
tourism economies. Therefore, a dynamic business and marketing plan will help in sustaining
and growing the tourism attraction of Sydney to achieve the vision of making Sydney one of

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the most favoured tourist destinations in the world with the best amenities for leisure as well
as business tourism (Platenkamp, & Botterill, 2013).
Conclusion
This is the basic outline of a business development plan for the tourism industry in Sydney
and this requires the support from the local authorities and the local industries. The aim of
this plan is to strengthen the economy of the city and overcome the challenges that the
tourism sector in Sydney is facing. This strategy is based on the contemporary challenges and
the economic conditions in the present day and provides a possible direction for the future
initiatives that could help in the development of tourism industry in Sydney.
References:

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industries/tourism
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for destination governance and sustainable tourism. Journal of Sutainable Tourism, Volume
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Destination and enterprise management for a tourism future.Tourism Management, Volume
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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517708000745
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