Persuasive Essay On Tourism In Australia

Move over France, step aside Italy – Australian dining is going global. Forget wooing tourists with bikini babe Lara Bingle and a controversial slogan: “Where the bloody hell are you?”, Tourism Australia has revealed their most recent campaign and this time they reckon that tourists can be enticed by our food and wine. Yes, it seems we’re back to the pinnacle days of throwing another “shrimp on the barbie”, Paul Hogan-style (Tacker 2010). But how big a part does food and wine now play in people’s travel choices? Is what we have to offer really that great? And is this how we should be selling Australia?

Thirty years ago, in the 1980s, Paul Hogan’s famous words, “shrimp on the Barbie” became a universally recognised slogan advocating Australia as a travel destination (Tacker 2010). Over time, Australia has diversified its laid-back nature and stereotypical outback setting as a branding mechanism to promote Australia’s magnificent natural environment, the people and their lifestyle (‘Hogan Hero: why this was our best tourism ad ever’ 2014). But somewhere between the normalisation of “throw another shrimp on the barbie” and “where the bloody hell are you?” Australia has unintentionally depicted itself as a country littered with beer drinking, koala hugging, pie-eating, Uluru climbing, crocodile catching beach bums, largely to the dismay of many budding travellers, not to mention citizens.

Sir Richard Branson is mystified by Australian tourism’s incompetence. “Forget about the fast trains the rest of the developed world has that we can't organise or the fast broadband internet system the federal government is attempting to impose on an unwilling telco industry: we can't even organise a successful advertising campaign to attract touri...

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...tronomy, France (‘Tourism Australia’s new campaign’ 2014). Pardon? “Are we saying that the great Aussie pie is set to trump beef bourguignon?” (‘Tourism Australia’s new campaign’ 2014). Although some of us are lucky enough to dine on snow eggs at Peter Gilmore’s world class Quay restaurant, we’re pretty sure most Aussies are tucking into something far more basic – vegemite on toast, meat pies, fish and chips, sausage rolls, or Tim Tams. These are the foods most travellers are probably going to experience on a trip down under.

So are we selling Australia’s true culinary experience or is this campaign selling a little bit of a white lie? Perhaps we are skimming over the fundamentals of what really sells Australia in our rush to cash in on the potential rewards. Perhaps Tourism Australia does not understand what creating a ‘fair dinkum’ representation really means.