Govt tourism spend: The figures may be a real shocker

By ERWIN CHLANDA
 
Professor Rolf Gerritsen from the Northern Institute says he suspects the appointment of tourism consultants by the NT Government may be “a bit of prevaricating – delays in major expenditure making next year’s deficit better, with the majority of expenditure in an election year?”
 
Meanwhile Prof Gerritsen (pictured) commented on comparisons reported by the Alice Springs News Online between tourism promotion spending by Territory and Queensland government agencies, based on per head of population.
 
In September 2012 we reported – and have referred to this in subsequent stories: “Tourism NT operates in an administration with a population of 220,000 and has a budget of $40m.
 
“The Queensland equivalent serves around four million people and gets $60m a year.
 
“TNT gets 12 times as much, per head, as Queensland, yet over the last 10 years tourism to the NT has about halved. Is that a sign of a well performing TNT?”
 
Prof Gerritsen says: “The per-tourist measure is probably better than a per capita measure.
 
“In about 2005, while working in the Chief Minister’s Department, we did some work on tourism marketing.
 
“We discovered that the NT spent 50 times as much per tourist as did NSW.”
 
Now that Tourism NT has been subsumed into the super department of Tourism and Culture, which has a $262.35m budget, government tourism promotion spending has become obscure.
 
We have asked Minister Lauren Moss to provide an itemised summary of all expenses by her department for that purpose, including advertising expenses and staff costs, for 2017/18 and 2018/19.