Introduction

Australia has a large concentration of Indigenous people, offering opportunities for

visitors to discover about the living indigenous culture rich in tradition. Indigenous
tourism opportunities range from visiting cultural centres and communities. Some
emphasise seeing performances or opportunities to buy art or other items. Others
want a strong personal experience and interaction with Indigenous people. Others
just want to look or visit sites related to the Indigenous. The National Survey of
Indigenous Tourism indicated the most popular experiences, which are learning
about how Aboriginal people are living, the opportunity to meet and talk with
Indigenous people and to visit their community, enjoy a traditional performance and
sometimes be part of the dances and to mention a few.
For this reason, the following report will be focusing on three main Indigenous
tourism sectors. These are the economic, social and environmental elements, which
all together provide a unique and memorable experience for all tourists.
Economy
In the last few years, Indigenous tourism started to be recognised by the Australian
Government as an important element to the Australian tourism industrys
competitiveness and for the economic development for Indigenous (Australian
Government: Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism 2010). Moreover,
surveys done by the Department of Resources, Energy & Tourism in 2009 showed
that the indigenous tourism visitors was valued at $7.2 billion, representing 12% of
total visitor expenditure in Australia (Australian Government: Department of
Resources, Energy and Tourism 2010, p 2). At the same time, Australia has around
300 Indigenous tourism businesses operating in the country, where more than half of
the businesses are located in remote areas. This data clearly shows the importance
of the indigenous tourism within the economic development.

(Australian

Government: Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism 2010).

For the last decade, there has been an increase in Indigenous tourism in Australia.
However, most of the high demand tourism comes from international people and has
encouraged indigenous to be involve in the tourism industry. For this, according to
the Indigenous Tourism (2008), the main economic indicators have been the creation
of employment and art and craft sales (Song 2008). According to Kart and Emmanuel
(2008) is that the most obvious benefits of tourism are the creation of new jobs and
the opportunity to increase peoples income and standard of living. In general, the

economic benefits for indigenous communities of engaging in tourism are generally

believed to generate from such sectors as employment, enterprises, manufacturing
of artifacts, provision of hunting and ritual culture and lease and sale of resources
(Song 2008).
Employment
One of the main benefits of indigenous tourism is the creation of new jobs and
therefore the opportunity for income increase in the host society. Furthermore,
Australia has a considerable potential for increasing employment opportunities and
financial benefits. Song (2008) mentioned that the tourist demand for contact with
Indigenous people has provided job opportunities such as tour guides on bush tours
and camping tours, dancers in ceremonial and ritual performances, and arts and
crafts manufacturers. In addition, in 2002 the National Territory Tourism Commission
(2008) gather an employment statistic, indicating that up to 56% of all employed
indigenous Australians are in the tourism industry such as a tour guide or arts and
crafts manufacturers. Clear examples are Uluru and Kakadu National Park; at Uluru
29 Aborigines were employed by Australian National Parks and Wildlife Services and
3 by Maruku Arts and Crafts, a regional community owned craft enterprise (Altman
J. 2003, p. 272).
Additionally, in 2011 the Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC) launched an indigenous
training and employment program, which will be established at the Ayers Rock
Resort in Yulara to attract and provide great employment opportunities to Indigenous
Australians from the locality and across Australia to support Indigenous businesses
(Jobs Australia Indigenous Training Network 2011). At the same time, Macklin, the
Minister for Indigenous Affaris, (2011) stated that new partnerships would create
around 350 new jobs for Indigenous community at Ayers Rock Resort and in
Australias hospitality industry. In addition, the ILC committed to raise the Indigenous
employment at the Ayers Rock Resort to 50 per cent by 2018, which will consist
around 100,000 new jobs. (Jobs Australia Indigenous Training Network 2011).
The reason that the Minister for Tourism, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs and the
Minister for Indigenous Employment and Economic Development are focusing on
Ayers Rock is because, according to Ferguson - the Minister for Tourism (2011),
Uluru is considered as one of the worlds most recognizable natural icons. Which
means, it is a potential strategy to provide employment program and partnership
creations within the hospitality industry such as Accor.

Another reason of the training implementation is because of the lack of training and
communication skills from the indigenous employees. Despite variations across
Australia, there is a distinct disadvantage in meeting many of the requirements of the
tourism industry. Such a disadvantage is caused by lower educational level of
Indigenous people and their lower proficiency in the English language, which causes
a low paid work in the service sector and few indigenous people with managerial
positions (Song 2008). Such is the reason of why the employment-training program is
creating high expectations within the tourism industry.

Indigenous Revenue of Products

For tourists, the indigenous artifacts are items such as paintings, drawings, prints,
photographs, art installations, sculpture, pottery, and ceramic and to mention a few.
Within Australia, the Australian Bureau of Statistic is in charge to collect all the
possible data related to the Commercial Art Galleries. However, it is difficult to
accurately determine the number of business involved in the production and sale of
art and craft items. This type of data sources usually focuses on the enterprises, not
the art and craft producers. The producers normally work independently and are
often not part of any formal network. Consequently, the ABS has not an accurate
survey for all the producers and enterprises related to the sales of the indigenous
products (ABS: Australian Bureau of Statistics 2008).
The Indigenous tourism business has been going through business ownership
issues, this means, non Indigenous people manage some tourism enterprises.
Mostly of the business managers as their primary consideration, prefer to look after
the business on a commercial success. However, the Indigenous people are more
concerned with their cultural and traditional identity and authenticity rather than the
marketing and sales strategies.
Nevertheless the issue mentioned above, the art and crafts still provides a significant
income for the tourism industry and the Indigenous community. The ABS (Australian
Government: Office of the Register of Indigenous Corporations 2012) has been doing
surveys based on the limited information found. The following table provides general
information starting from 1979 2007, where it clearly shows a strong growth over
the last 28 years.

Year

Revenue ($m)

1979 - 1980

$2.5

1989

$18.5

1995

$60

1999 - 2000

$142.4

2002

$200

2007

$400 - $500

(Australian Government: Office of the Register of Indigenous Corporations 2012)

According to the above information, the ABS (Altman 2003, p.17) stated that 58% of
international visitors, includes Aboriginal art as part of their cultural and art visit. This
clearly shows that the Art and Craft is a significant element for the aboriginal tourism
economy. Moreover, the reasons for the growth interest in Aboriginal art and craft is
because currently it is presented as contemporary as opposed to ethnographic art
within a historic, spiritual, ceremonial or cultural context (Tourism of New South
Wales 2001, p.10).

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