The Expansion of the Hospitality Industry- Part 5: The Australian Expansion

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The commonwealth of Australia is one of the world’s oldest landmasses. It has been populated by people since about 60,000 years ago, even before the first European settlers set foot on it. With only 21.3 million in population, Australia has 60% of the population on the mainland for which Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide are included.

Tourism in Australia has been very consistent mainly due to the beauty and diversity of the continent. In fact 69% of the GDP of Australia can be attributed to education, financial services, and tourism.

As a testament to the Australian government’s commitment to tourism, you can look at their Hollywood campaign. The campaign started with a commercial where a bikini-clad woman was shouting, “Where the bloody hell are you?” This campaign was amusing to some people, but to some countries the commercial was even banned from being shown on air.

The next wave of the campaign for the Australian tourism expansion is the movie Australia, starring big time Hollywood names like Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. This movie will apparently be some kind of big movie and elaborate ad campaign to feature all the beautiful places and majestic beaches of the country. This is just a success waiting to happen, if we can count on the track record of ads in Hollywood.

The problem of Australia as of right now is the shortage of rooms and hotels. Shortage of rooms can lead to more expensive room rates and other fees attributed to the use of amenities, and even food and beverages rates. This is bad news since Australia has about 4 million visitors during the nine months up to September 2008.

Because of this effort, Perth and Mackay are still having shortages in hotel rooms. It is projected that Mackay needs 1,000 more rooms in the next decade. This is the extent to which the tourism in the country has really reached. Studies showed that lack of accommodations is the only downfall that the area has. Hopeful, the Australian tourism research will improve and zero in on the area to help it maximize the accommodations for tourists.

For the area of Perth, experts contend that accommodations have been at an all time low. Perth is said to be one of the hardest places in the world to find accommodations. In 2007, the room accommodation in Perth reached about 85%. This number is more than tourist hot spots like Singapore, Dubai, and London. With a low accommodation rate comes high room rates. It was said that you can get a room in Perth for about $400 a night.

As regards the shortage of rooms, the Accor group is trying to address some of these concerns. Even with this trying time of economic downturn, they are still hiring a lot personnel from Human Resources, Finance people, Engineers, Kitchen Personnel, Housekeeping, and a lot more.

It is incredible how Australia is still keeping up its tourism regardless of the economic recession the world is experiencing. The only thing that the country needs to address is the accommodations. If the Australian tourism research is right, then the country needs more than a couple of thousand more rooms in order to accommodate tourists in the next decade. This problem looks minuscule compared to a country without tourism at all, but to the contrary, this problem is just as gigantic to conquer.

Next in the series, we will see how the Sydney Olympics affected tourism in Australia and how well is the country still doing post Olympics.

Please Note: This is the “Part 5” in a series of articles focusing on the “Expansion of the Hospitality Industry”. Over the weeks that follow you can expect to find further parts published in relation to the expansion.

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