The big challenge for Australia is understanding Chinese travellers and adapting to meet the demands of the Middle Kingdom's rapidly expanding wealthy middle class, a major tourism conference has been warned.
The annual Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) symposium on Hamilton Island has been told the value of holiday-makers coming to Australia from China could nearly treble in the next 10 years.
An executive at Tourism Australia (TA), Frances-Anne Keeler, told the conference on Thursday that while the Chinese market was worth $3.2 billion in 2010, by 2020 it's expected to be worth more than $9 billion.
"There was a 24 per cent growth in Chinese arrivals last year, much higher than any other market," Ms Keeler said.
Ms Keeler said the big challenge for Australian operators was understanding the Chinese customer.
"China is a huge country with many, many different target audiences, and we need to spend time gathering the insight to understand them, work out what it is that's going to attract them, what they want to do and see when they get here, what they want to eat, and then make sure we build a product around that," she said.
"We have an amazing product in Australia for all types of customer requirements, it's just understanding what the specific Chinese customer wants that we're targeting, and making sure we're delivering that."
Ms Keeler said the corporate TA website, tourism.australia.com, has a wealth of information which operators around the country can tap into.
"And I think if people can make it to the Australia-China Tourism Summit in Cairns from the 6th to the 8th of June, that's going to be a great opportunity to start a dialogue on the Chinese market, especially as representatives of the China National Tourism Authority will be attending."
The man who put together the famous Paul Hogan "throw another shrimp on the barbie" tourism promotion, ATEC Chairman John King, warned the symposium the industry has to resume leadership of its own destiny.
"When you look back at what I call the golden era of tourism in Australia in the mid-`80s through the `90s, the industry was very largely driven by entrepreneurs and governments tended to support that," Mr King said.
"But there's been almost an acceptance of an increased government role in determining the direction of tourism, and I think we need as an industry to regain an entrepreneurial spirit and have the industry determine the direction it wants and needs to head in, and have government support that direction."
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