The 44th Australian Tourism Exchange (ATE24) ended today in Melbourne, providing a valuable boost for the Australian tourism sector as it begins to recover from the past few years. As part of the Visit Victoria partnership, the event connected hundreds of operators, buyers, and press from Australia and other countries.
ATE24 acted as a tool to present Australia as a unique tourist destination, as well as demonstrate the industry’s preparedness for overcoming all the challenges of the global scale. The event included both conventional business-to-business physical meeting and engagement sessions, as well as digital engagement sessions and experience sessions that seeks to provide a glimpse of Australia.
The Managing Director of Tourism Australia, Phillipa Harrison, has shown her satisfaction for the good outcome of the event and said: “ATE24 has demonstrated once again to be an important tool for our tourism sector to network, combine effort and foster business.” The activity level that has manifested itself over the last few days speaks volumes to the robustness of our segment.
Another common trend that could be identified during this year’s exchange was the need for implementing eco and socially-friendly tourism. Accommodation providers also demonstrated initiatives to: An excellent example of this was many operators who presented how they had embraced responsible tourism policies such as environmental management; whereby several highlighted their support towards local communities and Australian environments, as well as the cultural and natural resources. The move towards more sustainable imagery and practices was generally welcomed by foreign consumers who also pointed out the present trends in tourism that show concern about the environment and cultural heritage of potential tourists’ destinations.
The event also called for the development of new technologies especially within the broad industry of tourist activities. A couple of them dealt with ways of applying virtual and augmented reality technologies in both engaging visitors and selling destinations. An important part of the event was performances using Australia as an example of creating virtual tours that enable those interested to visit Australian attractions without leaving home.
Another focal sector for Indigenous people consistently during the ATE24 conference was Indigenous tourism. The participants and members engaged in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tourism businesses discussed their insight and understanding of the new trends with a focus on international tourists’ demand for culture-based tourism products. Several patrons spoke of their interest in including these products in their packages to fully immerse travelers in Australia’s heritage.
Another major item discussed throughout the event was the recovery of the inbound tourism market in Australia. Although the industry has responded to the post-reopening context to some extent, including in aviation capacity and labour supply. These matters were all discussed in various meetings with industry players and governments because people were determined to come up with best practices to promote the industry further.
A clear development at ATE24 was that regional tourism was a central theme and many less visited destinations used the fair to present their special selling points. This created an opportunity to showcase Tasmania’s wildernessand the tropical paradise that is North Queensland to buyers – the destinations went beyond the usual mainstream tourist attractions. This is because the emphasis on regional dissemination is considered instrumental to ensuring that tourism spreads the economic benefits better.
It was not without its troubles too though; Melbourne saw unusually warm weather selected issues related to climate change and tourism. A few sessions discussed how the industry should prepare for meeting new challenges posed by the change of environment and how it should minimize the impacts of climate variations as well as respond to weather condition challenges.
At the end of ATE24, the social atmosphere of the participants could be characterized by a positive outlook on the future. If admitting current challenges the industry still has before it, there is the air of anticipation of the optimistic outlook for the future of the sector in Australia. Some of the remarks that most of the participants made included is that they were able to develop working relationships and understandings that they would help in developing action plans for the rest of the year.
The closing ceremony was attended by Tourism Minister Don Farrell who underlined the government’s readiness to continue the assistance in stimuli the industry. High-quality growth such as the kind seen at ATE24, is a sure sign Australia’s tourism is ready for take-off, he told the website. ‘We are going to continue to engage with the industry very closely to ensure that we build on this and fully establish Australia as one of the top tourism destinations globally.’
And when the delegates left Melbourne, the effort was quickly transferred to the preparation of the next year’s event which many are already anticipating the ATE25. The venue for the next Australian Tourism Exchange has not been named yet; however, it can be suggested that yet another successful meeting will help to boost Australia’s position in the worldwide tourism industry.
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