Yesterday, while liveblogging American Idol, I linked to the official Tourism Australia site. They’ve rolled out an ad campaign that’s featured quite heavily on Astro at the moment (it’s a nice spot too).
One thing that immediately struck me when I visited their website was an item on the front page. Right there, under the Special Features column, there’s a download link for their Muslim Visitors’ Directory to Australia, which is described as “your handy pocket-size directory listing restaurants that caters to the dining requirements of Muslim visitors, as well as locations to mosques”. Now, I haven’t downloaded the directory, so I don’t know how helpful or comprehensive it is, but it’s amazing just to find it there on the front page in the first place.
How many other tourism sites for non-Muslim countries have something similar? I think it’s a great move, and is a huge sign of respect to the sensitivities of Muslims. Most places would leave it to the Muslim traveler to find out where to find places of worship, and halal eateries. Maybe there would be special tourist agencies to cater to that market. Or maybe you’d have to rely on your own embassy to aid you with that information. But to have it right there on the country’s official tourism site is just very convenient.
Now, despite the conventional wisdom about greater Middle Eastern/Muslim tourist arrivals in the area, I don’t think it’s necessarily about grabbing that market. Granted, it probably plays some role, but delving into the tourist arrival statistics (available here) shows that it’s not really that huge a market share.
If you consider only arrivals from the Middle East, 2007 figures for total inbound market value (tourist dollar spend) show a ~2.2% market share. Projections for 2009 show this increasing to 3.0%. If you add in figures from Indonesia and Malaysia (not all, obviously), this can double, but it’s still less than 10% of the total. So it’s not entirely a numbers game. Being in the neighbourhood of the largest Muslim nation in the world probably plays a part though, so it’s a smart move, no matter the motivation.
Kudos to Tourism Australia.
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