Aboriginal Tourism Development in Central Australia: how to reach the four-wheel-drive market

Aboriginal cultural tourism has been recognised as one of the main pillars of tourism in desert Australia. Despite substantial investment by government marketing and economic development agencies, the success of Aboriginal tourism has been limited in the past. Increasing the opportunities for Aboriginal tourism development in remote desert Australia might require an extended range and diversity of products and new distribution strategies to access new markets. This book reports on a study that analysed the potential of the four - wheel-drive (4WD) market to stimulate Aboriginal tourism in central Australia. The study investigates 4WD travellers demand for Aboriginal tourism products and analyses how these products need to be distributed to reach this highly independent and mobile market. The results of this research are relevant to both tourism practitioners and academics interested in the development of 4WD tourism and Aboriginal tourism in some of the remotest parts of Australia

Managing the transition from coach to car-based markets: the search for commercial value in Australia's Flinders Ranges

[Extract] Remote destinations are fundamentally constrained by a lack of infrastructure and mass transport access, a lack of critical mass, and physical isolation from both markets and business partners (Hall and Boyd 2005). In Australia, changing consumer trends in the marketplace have further disadvantaged remote tourism destinations. Organised coach tourism, which used to dominate tourism activity in 'Outback' destinations throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, has experienced a decline over the past decade (Carson and Taylor 2009). As a result, these destinations find themselves increasingly more dependent on independent drive tourism markets. The\ud former dependence on coach tourism has created an extensive homogenisation and a clustering of tourism products in and around a limited number of tourist centres. While this was a viable strategy when coaches brought large numbers of tourists on regular and geographically constrained\ud schedules, the resultant approaches to product development, marketing and management are less well suited to drive tourists, who travel in smaller groups, are more geographically dispersed and seek experiences beyond\ud scenery and icon attractions. Managing a successful transition from coach- to car-based markets requires innovative approaches to product development and marketing.\ud The need for innovation has been described as critical to stimulate tourism in peripheral or remote regions (Carson and Taylor 2008; Sharpley 2002; Hohl and Tisdell 1995). Having the capacity to innovate allows the industry\ud and the destination to adapt quickly to changing circumstances and to take advantage of new opportunities (Jacobsen 2005). An increasing body of literature suggests that one of the most effective ways to create innovations\ud is by operating as a 'system of innovation' in which individual businesses, public organisations and institutions interact and influence each other (Iammarino 2005; Edquist 1997). How the mechanics of such 'systems of\ud innovation' operate in the context of remote tourism destinations is still unclear. Due to their spatial and structural disadvantages, remote regions will understandably face more challenges and barriers to the development of successful innovation systems than urban or semi-urban regions (Doloreux and Dionne 2008). The diversity of the self-drive markets adds an additional\ud layer of complexity that has not been considered in the literature to date. This chapter looks at the case of the Flinders Ranges, a relatively remote destination in South Australia that has experienced a strong decline in coach tourism and now has over 80 per cent of its market as self-drive tourists (South Australian Tourism Commission 2008). It analyses how the various components of successful 'systems of innovation' in tourism (Carson and Macbeth 2005) operate in a remote tourism destination and how this\ud has influenced the destination's capacity to manage the transition from coach to self-drive tourism markets. After highlighting major issues in the Flinders Ranges, the chapter reflects on recent trends in self-drive tourism\ud in remote regions and discusses the challenges associated with managing market transition. It will provide a brief review of 'systems of innovation' approaches, examining the individual components of the systems framework used in this study. The main part of the chapter will analyse the Flinders Ranges tourism system using Carson and Macbeth's 'systems of innovation' framework for regional tourism (Carson and Macbeth 2005) and finally outline the challenges and opportunities the destination faces as it seeks to manage successful market transition

Aboriginal Tourism Development in Central Australia: how to reach the four-wheel-drive market

Aboriginal cultural tourism has been recognised as one of the main pillars of tourism in desert Australia. Despite substantial investment by government marketing and economic development agencies, the success of Aboriginal tourism has been limited in the past. Increasing the opportunities for Aboriginal tourism development in remote desert Australia might require an extended range and diversity of products and new distribution strategies to access new markets. This book reports on a study that analysed the potential of the four - wheel-drive (4WD) market to stimulate Aboriginal tourism in central Australia. The study investigates 4WD travellers demand for Aboriginal tourism products and analyses how these products need to be distributed to reach this highly independent and mobile market. The results of this research are relevant to both tourism practitioners and academics interested in the development of 4WD tourism and Aboriginal tourism in some of the remotest parts of Australia

The power of loose ties: networking for market diversification in remote Australia

Tourism in remote Outback areas of Australia has become increasingly homogenous in terms of products and markets over the last decade and is currently suffering substantial\ud declines in visitor numbers (Carson and Taylor, 2009). As a result, calls have been mounting for more innovative approaches to market diversification and product development in remote Australia. Much of the literature on innovation suggests that one of the most effective ways to create innovations is by operating as a 'system of innovation' in which individual business, public organisations and institutions interact and influence each other (Carlssson and Stankiewicz, 1991; Edquist, 1997; Iammarino, 2005). Having strong institutional arrangements that encourage strong network and clusters is a key factor in the development of regional systems of innovation (Doloreux and Parto, 2005' Storper, 1995). Remote regions appear to be fundamentally constrained in the pursuit of networks and clusters by a lack of critical mass, the geographic dispersal and isolation of firms, and limted resources and preparedness to engage in networks and collaboration (Doloreux and Dionne, 2008; Virkkala, 2006)

Understanding the impact of the inherited institutional environment on tourism innovation systems in resource dependent peripheries: a case study of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia

The purpose of this dissertation is to use the theoretical foundations of the 'staples thesis' to analyse and explain how the institutional environment inherited from resource dependence influences the capacity of peripheral regions to operate as regional tourism innovation systems (RTIS). The staples thesis is a theoretical approach to explaining processes of economic growth and development in peripheral economies that rely on the export of unprocessed natural\ud resources – the 'staples'. It suggests that the institutional environment resulting from a long-term\ud dependence on staples export can become locked-in to the extent that the economic system becomes unable to change. The implications of this 'staples trap' are that the system struggles to innovate and diversify for reasons such as the adoption of an export mentality and the continued\ud preference for importing external (financial and human) capital over developing capital internally. The staples thesis, with its concept of the 'staples trap' as a form of institutional lockin, offers considerable potential to help explain why resource dependent regions in developed\ud countries (such as Australia, Canada, the United States, and New Zealand) often struggle to develop tourism as a successful alternative industry.\ud \ud The research is based on the analysis of a case study in the Flinders Ranges – a traditional resource periphery in South Australia that has tried to diversify its regional economy over the past decades by developing tourism. The case study examined the characteristics and performance of the Flinders Ranges tourism destination from a RTIS perspective to identify how the tourism destination system has been affected by the inherited institutional environment. The research used Carson and Jacobsen's (2005) systems-of-innovation framework for regional tourism as an analytical framework. This framework outlines a number of systemic requirements that are critical for well-functioning RTIS, including: entrepreneurship, economic competence, networks and clusters, critical mass and diverse development blocks, the production and distribution of knowledge, productive public sector contributions, a favourable institutional infrastructure, and the quality of social, political and cultural capital. Case study\ud methods included semi-structured in-depth interviews, document and website analyses, analysis of secondary data sources, and personal observations.\ud \ud The findings suggest that the institutional environment inherited from the region's traditional staples industries (agriculture, pastoralism and mining) has clearly reduced the capacity of the local tourism system to operate as a RTIS. Locals had only limited entrepreneurial capabilities\ud and skills in tourism due to an entrenched culture of reliance on government and external wholesalers for investment, employment, knowledge transfer and control of production and distribution. Locals had a limited tradition of networking, collaboration and knowledge exchange because they had never learnt such practices in the past when they had to deliver homogenous bulk commodities to external wholesalers. In addition, government intervention in\ud tourism was often characterised by an inherited 'staples export mentality'. Government strategies aimed to convert tourism into a new export industry and continued to target largescale development and external investors instead of building local capital. Despite these limitations, the case study found that the Flinders Ranges tourism system has undergone a number of slow but significant changes since the mid-2000s, which have increased the system's capacity to operate as a RTIS. The most prominent changes included: an increase in the number of skilled tourism entrepreneurs; the emergence of a new networking and learning culture\ud among local tourism operators; a new focus on local training and capacity building; and the increasing public sector support for locally driven cross-regional tourism projects. These changes emerged as a result of the in-migration of externally trained entrepreneurs and public\ud sector leaders who introduced new knowledge, practices and attitudes to the region.\ud \ud This thesis argues that peripheral regions with a long history of staples dependence, like the Flinders Ranges, require profound changes in their institutional environment to be able to operate as well-functioning RTIS. Tourism is not an 'easy' alternative to back up existing resource economies in times of economic crisis. Instead, it is a new industry that requires the whole system with its collective of stakeholders to fundamentally change previous ways of\ud operating. Such institutional change is very unlikely to emerge from within the local economic system. In the case of the Flinders Ranges, institutional change was a slow and incremental process that was facilitated by 1) the import of external human capital, and 2) the willingness to\ud gradually integrate external with local human capital so that locals could 'learn' new (and simultaneously 'un-learn' old) practices and attitudes.\ud \ud The research concludes that analysing tourism destinations as RTIS under the particular light of the staples thesis offers a new and better way of explaining system dynamics and innovation capacities of destinations in resource dependent peripheries. Applying a staples thesis lens to the\ud analysis of peripheral RTIS can add a more evolutionary institutional perspective to generic systems-of-innovation analysis in tourism, which has so far been relatively static. Building on Carson and Jacobsen's (2005) systems-of-innovation framework for regional tourism, this\ud dissertation provides an enhanced theoretical framework that recognises the role and impact of the inherited institutional environment in shaping tourism innovation dynamics. The framework is built around a familiar case study methodology that allows for ongoing comparative research and further theory building in the field of peripheral tourism studies

Product development and distribution for Aboriginal tourism in Central Australia : a focus on the 4WD market

Very little is currently known about the demand for Aboriginal tourism products from the desert 4WD market and the potential for Aboriginal desert people to develop viable products for this growing market sector. To address this gap in knowledge, this research sought to identify to what extent 4WD travellers in central Australia are interested in getting indigenous cultural experiences on their desert trips and what kind of products they might consume. The study further investigated information seeking patterns and trip planning characteristics of 4WD travellers to find out whether current marketing and distribution methods of indigenous tourism products are appropriate for this market. - AbstractMade available by the Northern Territory Library via the Publications (Legal Deposit) Act 2004 (NT).Introduction -- Theoretical background - Desert tourism - 4WD self-drive tourism - Indigenous tourism in Australia - Distribution of tourism products and the role of information -- Methodology - Introduction - Research design and data collection strategies - ethical issues - Data analysis - Limitations -- Results - Introduction - Trip characteristics and motivations - Trip planning behaviour - The role of Aboriginal culture in the overall trip experience -- Discussion of results -- Conclusions -- Recommendations and future outlook -- Bibliography -- Appendices A-DMAGISTRA (FH) f?r wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Berufe = [Thesis: Masters Degree in Economics and Management

Whose tourism city is it? The role of government in tourism in Darwin, Northern Territory

Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory, has recently received high levels of government investment in tourism development. This paper examines the role of the Northern Territory Government in the development and marketing of tourism in Darwin and investigates the types of strategies that the government has sought to implement over the past decade. The results suggest that the Northern Territory Government has been using tourism primarily as a vehicle to boost immediate short-term economic and employment growth by investing in large-scale "showy" construction projects. Government sponsored initiatives in tourism are highly growth-orientated and show a tendency towards "superlativism". The paper finally discusses a range of limitations and implications of such strong government patronage of tourism and identifies directions for future research

Information search and trip planning behaviour of international and domestic four wheel drive travellers in central Australia

Understanding how tourists acquire knowledge, develop vacation plans and make travel decisions is one of the most critical tasks facing tourism businesses and destination marketing organisations in developing effective communication strategies. Gaining a detailed knowledge about the trip planning behaviour of a specific target market is, however, very complicated and challenging. Numerous studies have focused on the analysis of tourist information search behaviour and have proposed a range of theoretic frameworks and general approaches to understand this complex process. In practical terms, the most important variables to understand the information search behaviour of a particular market appear to be the timing of trip planning and information search, the sources of information used at different stages of the trip, and the contribution of these sources to decision-making. This paper reports on the findings from a recent study which analysed the information search behaviour of international and domestic independent 4WD travellers in central Australia. The research looked for differences between the international and domestic markets in terms of information search and trip planning, and tried to match search behaviours to some commonly used models. The results emphasise the predominant importance of in-trip information search among independent traveller markets. At the same time, it argues that existing theoretic models of tourist information search do not adequately account for spontaneous in-trip decisions

Drive tourism: a view from the road

[Extract] The nature of self-drive tourism is changing globally. In countries where privately owned vehicles have long been a popular choice of tourism transport, increased access to low-cost airfares and increased costs of vehicle\ud maintenance and fuel have been critical influences. Holyoak et al. (2009) documented the shift in Australia, for example, from a market dominated by tourists 'in transit' - using the vehicle simply as the most convenient mode of transport between the origin and the destination - to one where the use of the vehicle was more central to the enjoyment of the trip as a whole. Consequently, self-drive tourism research is now beginning to pay more attention to four-wheel-drive travel (Taylor and Carson, this volume,\ud Chapter 17; Prideaux and Coghlan, this volume, Chapter 18), caravanning (van Heerden, this volume, Chapter 6; McClymont et al., this volume, Chapter 16), motorcycling (Walker, this volume, Chapter 12) and other subsets of the market where the vehicle itself is embraced as a core attribute\ud of the tourism experience, rather than as a necessary evil of transport. In countries where vehicle ownership is only now becoming widespread (Yu et aI., this volume, Chapter 8; du Cros and Ong, this volume, Chapter 9, which highlight the case of China), whole new types of tourism experiences\ud are being made possible, free from the constraints of scheduled mass transit. The use of the vehicle as conspicuous consumption reflects the rise of new middle classes who want to purchase tourism as part of a confirmation of their new place in a wider world than they previously accessed. It must also be noted that in a number of markets, including China, India, Eastern Europe and South America, self-drive tourism has emerged after the development of low-cost air travel. The development of the self-drive market in these countries will not take the same path as in North America, Europe and Australasia, where the mass ownership of cars pre-dated access to low-cost air travel. Our thesis is that the major change in the global self-drive markets is a shift away from the car as a form of least-cost transport towards the use of a variety of self-driven vehicles that add value to the tourism experience. This book has documented the meaning of that fundamental change in the marketplace from the perspective of the tourist. Chapters have documented what it now means to be a drive tourist in China, a four-wheel-driver\ud in Australia, a motorcyclist in the UK, a motorhome driver in the US, an international self-driver in Brazil, and so on. There have also been reflections on what the global markets and emerging trends mean for the tourism\ud industry - rental car companies in New Zealand, motoring associations, marketers of touring routes and other drive destinations, or emergency services agencies. In this chapter, we use the 'Grand Tour' (Olsen 2002) of Central and Eastern Australia to illustrate the challenges facing destinations and businesses in adjusting to new market dynamics and to synthesise issues raised throughout the book