Nora Kloppenburg
Nora is a 2nd year ITMC student. This blogpost is about some of her experiences during the ITMC fieldwork. After visting Singapore, the students have moved on to Brisbane, Australia where a few more guest lectures are planned before they set out in their sub-groups to do their fieldwork in several destinations around Brisbane.
Australia. Now we are about to experience how different and maybe in some ways how similar a destination can be to another. Comparing Australia to a country like Singapore, with its amazing architecture, futuristic characteristics and rapid developments, is certainly not easy.
Singapore, a country often described as an authoritarian state, as it applies very strict rules, sometimes seems “unreal” or dreamy, although in my opinion it is one of the most fascinating destinations I have ever seen. On the other hand is Australia, a continent with an opposite feeling by seeming more ”real” and relaxed, full of open minded, friendly people, different to the more reserved, though very friendly Asian people.
A few days of in Manly Harbour
By spending the first two nights in a small suburb of Brisbane, called Manly Harbour, I discovered a much rougher lifestyle, which probably contributed to the feeling of reality crushing down on me, resulting in a small culture shock. However, I noticed that most of the people including me were able to adapt very quickly to both destinations, which I find very pleasant and impressive in such a short time.
After experiencing two very different days in Manly Harbour, which strangely reminded me of a small British town except the weather was much nicer, we arrived in the Brisbane Backpacker Resort. In order to discover the city and to receive valuable information about Queensland, we attended various lectures held at the University of Queensland, as well as at the Brisbane Airport.
Tourism Queensland
The first lecture on Monday the 22nd of March 2010, given by Theresa Phillips, the director of Industry Innovation Tourism Queensland, provided insights into Queensland’s past and future tourism marketing campaigns and their effectiveness. After Mrs Phillips talked about facts and figures about tourism demand, receipts and expenditures, she introduced the promotion campaign ”Best Job” of which she felt enormously proud, as it created a lot of awareness for Queensland as a beautiful tourism destination. People from all over the world applied for the “Best Job” involving observations in the Great Barrier Reef area, which is of great prestige to Queensland and therefore using it as an advertising tool. Since this marketing campaign was of huge success, the standards of promoting Queensland raised as expectations increased. Therefore, Tourism Queensland is under a lot of pressure to meet or exceed those expectations.
Furthermore, Theresa Phillips gave insights in developing Queensland into a destination, which creates “guilt free” experiences for visitors. Therefore, she introduced different projects for example the Sustainable Regions Project after which 50 businesses in Queensland committed to sustainability in five regions throughout the continent. Although actions have been taken in order to reach responsible objectives in Queensland’s tourism, Mrs Phillips mentioned that it is a long process to really be sustainable.
All in all, I believe that the lecture by Tourism Queensland was helpful in order to get an insight into the management and development of tourism in Queensland and Australia, a continent not situated as central as others like Europe for example. However, in the beginning a lot of people including me had the impression that the lecture was a bit confusing, as Theresa Phillips jumped back and forth from one topic to the other. This may also be a result of some technical difficulties with showing a DVD, as well the fact that the lecture was held very early in the morning. Although I believe that the campaign is something one can be very proud of, the enthusiasm about their marketing campaign might have taken the overhand during the lecture once in a while. However, I pretty much liked that Theresa Phillip used a lot of storytelling, as well as passion.
EC3 Global
The second Lecture on Monday the 22nd of March 2010 was held by Sophie Klatt, a project officer of EC3 Global, an environmental benchmarking and consulting firm, owned by the Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre, which is the world’s largest source of sustainable tourism research. EC3 is a non profit organisation, globally accessible. EC3’s tasks involve benchmarking and certification of environmental sustainability, as well as providing advice, developing strategies and consulting services to communities and enterprises internationally. For this they apply Green Globe as well as their own Earth Check certifications.
Sophie Klatt informed us about current projects that stimulate sustainable awareness, performances and improvements in order to achieve sustainable outcomes. Great advantages for enterprises being benchmarked by such organisations are the ability to share knowledge and research, as well as to gain greater recognition throughout the world. Moreover, sustainability contributes to profitable business practice, financially as well as to staff morality improvements and visitors satisfaction. Sophie Klatt seemed very comfortable and she provided us with a lot of Information about sustainability projects, sometimes even a little too much to remember.
The third lecture at the University of Queensland was held by Doctor Noel Scott, a very knowledgeable professor. He gave an amazing lecture about tourism in Australia and more specifically about tourism in Queensland. By means of teaching us typical Australian phrases, he was able to grab our attention. Dr. Scott used a lot of maps to visualize tourism in Australia and to provide us with travel recommendations for our week off. The lecture was very interactive, as he would ask questions and involving us more than other lecturers. Noel Scott seemed very passionate about his job. I found it very interesting that he only got into tourism after studying chemistry at a bachelor level and banking at a masters level. Who knows where we could end up working. By making jokes and being more personal, although still professional, the lecture was fun to listen to, as well as useful for writing our destination analysis.
Brisbane Airport
Brisbane Airport
On Tuesday 23rd of March 2010 we travelled to Brisbane Airport. The Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC) provided a tour around the airport in order to inform as about recent and future developments. Furthermore, we had a lecture were the link between the tourism industry in Brisbane and aviation management was outlined in order to estimate the level of importance. By using surrounding destinations of the South Pacific such as Samoa, Fiji and Papua New Guinea as an example the link was made very clear. I think it is very interesting to see how the knowledge can differ depending in which part of the world you are working. The lecturer knew everything about the South Pacific, whereas we or people who work in Europe are probably more familiar with surrounding or destinations of Europe. The lecture was given very professionally. By letting us guess the countries he was talking about, we were not able to fell asleep, neither will I forget what he taught us. This, in my opinion shows great presentation skills.
And then at last, the departure to our research area
Then, finally, my group were about to leave to Moreton Island. We were all very excited as we already had gathered a lot of information. Now, it was time to find out if the island is as beautiful as it was described. After, a huge grocery shopping mission we took the ferry to Moreton. Upon arrival, the beauty bewildered us. The first thing we saw besides the breathtaking beach – dolphins!!! This fieldwork is going to be legendary.
