Mark's picture
Thu, 27/09/2007 - 8:44am — Mark


The NSW Tourism Minister, Matt Brown, hit back, pointing to a survey by Conde Nast Traveller magazine in which Sydney was voted the most popular tourism destination. “Melbourne can carry on as much as they like about their small bars but it’s not winning them any favours in the international market,” he said.


The truth is that Melbourne has nothing to attract international tourists. Having liberal liquor licensing isn’t going to do much since a lot of tourists can get that in their home countries – although it undoubtedly does help Melbourne attract holidayers from New South Wales. People I know seem to go to Melbourne all the time and come back and rave about how great it was in some slightly indefinable way, that always seems to involve drinking. Within Australia, Melbourne, with its trams and youth culture and boutique boozers is something special. Internationally, it’s nothing, unlike Sydney, which has a climate and geography that make it internationally exceptional – one should probably also mention the food, and then that Melbourne is stealing the march on Sydney there. Sydney doesn’t compete with Melbourne for international tourists; the only competition Melbourne has is the Neighbours set, which is, mysteriously, more popular among British backpackers than Sydney’s equivalent, Palm Beach. Rather, Sydney competes for international travelers with Cairns and the Gold Coast domestically, and Rome and Bangkok internationally. Importing positive elements of Melbourne like culture and fun and trams would only help Sydney in such competition, and it would also allow Sydney to perform better in domestic tourism. Of course none of that is any obvious inducement to the NSW political class who are mainly interested in political donations and pokie revenues, but there is some hope that the obvious popularity of licensing liberalisation will pique their interest.