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WELCOME: From the TICT
Last month, TICT held its Annual General Meeting, prompting our board to look back on an extraordinary 12 months for our industry and organisation.
I am so proud of how our sector has responded to the most difficult of circumstances over the past year and the resilience we have shown as an industry, and how we have worked together at all levels of the industry and across the State. As TICT Chair, I am also very proud of our organisation’s achievements and leadership over the past year and the considerable outcomes we have achieved for our operators. As a board, the TICT directors met frequently through 2020 in person and on Zoom. Despite each of us dealing with our own stresses and uncertainties in our own businesses and organisations, we managed to come together regularly through the year to shape our industry response to COVID. In the very depths of last year’s shutdown, we worked constructively with State and Federal Governments in identifying the immediate needs for industry assistance and helping to shape the different support packages Governments made available. I want to particularly acknowledge the Tasmanian Government for its responsiveness over that difficult time in rolling-out assistance to businesses quickly and compassionately. We also worked strategically with the Tasmanian Government in developing the new T21 Tasmanian Visitor Economy Action Plan, to set a strategic blueprint for rebuilding our tourism industry over the next two years. I am pleased to see the T21 priorities really starting to rollout now, and the commitment from both industry and government to not just get us back to where we were before COVID, but also lay the foundations for our industry’s future over the next decade. TICT prioritised and lobbied for the extension of the Bass Strait Passenger Vehicle Equalisation Scheme and the ‘Free Car Fares’ that have filled the Spirits up over the autumn months. This has been an amazing success and we hope the extension will be now continued through winter. While in the last few months we have advocated strongly to see a resolution to the uncertainty about the future of Bass Strait. We warmly welcomed the State Government’s announcement in March that it will proceed with commissioning two new purpose-built and forty percent larger monohull ships to replace the ageing Spirit of Tasmania ships.
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We have been working constantly with government to look at what can be done around rental cars, held some great industry events, and perhaps most importantly, provided a strong and steady voice for the industry during a period of tremendous uncertainty. While we know some businesses are doing better than they were expecting and have had a reasonable summer, there are many operators who are not recovering as strongly. Especially those tourism businesses reliant upon international visitors. TICT will continue through 2021 to give voice to our industry colleagues who need support and are struggling through no fault of their own.
New TICT Leadership
At the AGM I had the honour to be re-elected Chair of the TICT Board for a further two-years. Joining me in our TICT leadership team are two new Deputy Chairs, Tara Howell and Robert Pennicott. Tara and Rob are both outstanding leaders of our industry, and successful nature tourism entrepreneurs who live the creed of sustainability and quality in all they do. They are already leaders of the industry and I look forward to working with them. Our former Co-Deputy Chair, Clint Walker, has stepped into the critical Financial Director role, while Kath McCann, has retired from the board after a decade of service to our organisation. At the AGM we also saw four new directors elected to the board for the first time: Olivia DeGroot (State Manager of Qantas), Bianca Welsh (Operator of Stillwater), Tim Parsons (Operator of Curinga Farm, but representing ATEC), and Emily Hopwood (representing Women in Tourism & Hospitality Tasmania). I am proud of the increasing diversity of the TICT board, by age, gender and regional representation. We need to continue to foster leadership at all levels of the industry and the TICT board is an important vehicle for this.
State Election
By the time you are reading this, I suspect the 2021 Tasmanian State Election will have either been run and won, or you are preparing to cast your vote. Either way I hope you will see that tourism has featured prominently throughout the campaign, with both major parties presenting comprehensive and practical tourism policies. TICT presented a list of our priorities to both major parties in early April. These priorities would come as no surprise to any Tasmanian tourism operator - more resources for Tourism Tasmania for destination marketing, investment in priority visitor infrastructure across the State, workforce development and skills and ensuring industry and government keep working strategically to grow Tasmania’s visitor economy. I am confident whatever the election result, tourism will be well placed with the next Government and we will continue to work together to progress our T21 priorities and build an even stronger Tasmanian tourism industry through the 2020s.
