Chief Executive Officer's Report

Annual Report 2012-13

Upon my appointment to the position of CEO in January this year, I was pleased to find that, after a significant restructure, Tourism Tasmania was successfully pursuing an ambitious agenda of reform aimed at ensuring the long-term sustainability of Tasmania's tourism industry.

Underpinning this success was the realignment of Tourism Tasmania's services to increase its focus on destination marketing. To that end, Tourism Tasmania initiated a range of projects to strengthen its marketing effort. These included the establishment of a regional tourism model for the state, a review and realignment of our approach to international marketing and the development of a new tourism brand to give Tasmania a unique identity in the market place.

Since then, we've also expanded our market research activities and commenced the redevelopment of our Discover Tasmania consumer website. We've also reviewed our approach to domestic marketing to better maximise the emerging opportunities of a changing social and technological world.

Although these projects are now well underway or fully completed, it's vital that we continue to consolidate and build on these priorities to ensure they achieve their goals.

To secure the long-term viability of our regional tourism model, we will continue to support our regional tourism organisations over the next two to three years to help them achieve autonomy and ensure they have the capability to deliver a full range of services to their stakeholders.

We will continue to interpret and reinterpret our new tourism brand through our marketing campaigns and consumer communications.

We will see the launch and further development of our consumer website, designed especially for tablet and mobile, that will place increased focus on third-party endorsement of the destination. The website will play a significant role in the way we market the state over the coming years.

And we will also see the creation of a new role within Tourism Tasmania to address the complex issues associated with access to and from the island. Access to Tasmania remains a critical constraint to the island's economic growth and Tourism Tasmania will work alongside other government department to help address these constraints.

The appointment of a whole-of-government Access Adviser, to be located within Tourism Tasmania, will research and recommend actions to address the constraints to economic growth arising from a lack of road and rail access to the island. Importantly, the aim is not just to increase visitation, but to ensure competitive access that will meet the demand and supply needs of the state across the entire year.

These initiatives are essential if we are to secure a competitive future for our tourism industry.

I thank the Board and staff for their warm welcome and support since my arrival and I look forward to an exciting and productive year ahead.

John Fitzgerald
CEO Tourism Tasmania

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