The secret of Tasmania is out.
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We’ve known it for years, but suddenly the rest of the world has caught on: the Apple Isle is the place to be.
In the past month, we’ve seen tourism figures smashed once again.
In late June, we heard that in the 12 months to March 2017, the state hosted a record 1.26 million visitors.
This month, an economic report from MyState showed that the state’s tourism numbers were the best in the nation, celebrating a rise of 7 per cent in 12 months.
These figures are only expected to grow.
Governmental powers recognise this, as evidenced by Saturday’s release of Tourism Tasmania’s international market approach.
The release details the tourism body’s plan to further infiltrate and ensnare the international visitors market.
It’s well known that we are in the Chinese visitor space, so this plan looks at taking on North America, greater Asia, and parts of Europe.
This feeds into the state government’s plans to achieve an annual total of 241,000 international visitors by the year 2020.
We’re going well – in 2016, we enjoyed 77,000 more international visitors than we did in 2013.
It is great to see Tasmania touted across the world, and exciting to think of the visitor growth we can achieve throughout the next three years.
To paraphrase, if we reach them, they will come.
But it is not enough to just draw visitors to our beautiful state. We must be ready to greet them when they arrive.
Are our roads tourist friendly?
Put yourself behind the wheel of a hire car: if you were driving in Tasmania for the first time, with the current signage, are you confident you’d get from A to B? (Without going the wrong way down a one-way street.)
If you were preparing to head to Tasmania for the first time, would you expect that you would be able to get mobile phone reception?
It’s not uncommon to hear of people who have moved to the state, with a mobile phone provider other than Telstra, who cannot get reception in the main street of a city.
There are the little Tassie quirks that locals learn to live with and live around. But if we are truly committed to tourism as our future, we must improve.
