The Australian tourism industry

Tourism is a key driver for the Australian economy. In 2006–07, tourism accounted for 3.7 per cent ($38.9 billion) of total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the tourism industry employed 482 800 people, 4.7 per cent of total employment in Australia.¹

In 2006–07, 5.6 million international tourists visited Australia, which was an increase of three per cent on the previous year. However, this was less than one per cent of the world's international tourists. During the same period, tourists spent a total of almost $85 billion on goods and services. Of this, international tourists visiting Australia spent $22.4 billion.²

Australia is a long haul destination for the majority of overseas visitors. This means that distance, time and budget are additional impediments to attracting international tourists. The past three years have also seen fluctuations in the relative value of the Australian dollar, and increases in fuel prices and airfares. These factors have effected the price competitiveness of Australia compared to other tourist destinations. The global tourism environment has also become increasingly competitive with Australia now competing with emerging markets such as China and India.

Tourism Australia

Tourism Australia is one of a number of government agencies that market Australia to attract overseas investment. Tourism Australia is responsible for international tourism marketing and the delivery of research and forecasts for the sector. It also provides a national leadership and coordination role for domestic tourism. As an Australian Government statutory authority, Tourism Australia is subject to the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997 (CAC Act). It was established on 1 July 2004 by the Tourism Australia Act 2004 ³, (the Act) following the integration of the Australian Tourist Commission, See Australia and the Bureau of Tourism Research. Tourism Australia's statutory objects are to:

• influence people to travel to Australia, including for events;
• influence people travelling to Australia to also travel throughout Australia;
• influence Australians to travel throughout Australia, including for events;
• help foster a sustainable tourism industry in Australia; and
• help increase the economic benefits to Australia from tourism.

Organisational structure

Tourism Australia is a global organisation with a workforce of some 230 staff located in Australia and overseas. It operates from its head office in Sydney, Research Unit in Canberra and in six regions that cover 23 international markets. Tourism Australia is governed by a Management Board which, apart from the Managing Director, is chosen by, and responsible to the Minister for Tourism. The Board is supported by two sub committees and three industry advisory panels. The Board sets Tourism Australia's strategic direction and develops policy, with the day to day operations of Tourism Australia being the responsibility of its Managing Director and executive leadership team.

Tourism Australia works closely with the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism and other government agencies to share information and develop marketing opportunities. It also collaborates with industry partners and the State and Territory tourism organisations (STOs) to facilitate a range of joint marketing initiatives, both domestically and internationally. The STOs are often co located with Tourism Australia's overseas offices.

From when it was established in 2004 to mid 2008, Tourism Australia has received approximately $500 million in funding. Of this, $412 million has been through parliamentary appropriations, with the additional revenue being generated through advertising, sale of goods and services, industry contributions and interest earned. Tourism Australia's budget for 2007–08 was $163 million.

Marketing Strategies

Tourism Australia's marketing strategies and advertising campaigns are designed to increase the number of international and domestic tourists, travelling to, and within, Australia. Currently, the markets being targeted are leisure, business and education. A core element of these marketing strategies is to target high yielding international tourists because they are more likely to stay longer, spend more and visit regional areas.

Tourism Australia's ‘message strategy' is central to the delivery of its international marketing projects and communications. This strategy promotes alignment of marketing activities and helps integrate Australian experiences and products. Tourism Australia uses television advertising, the tourism website australia.com, digital communications, public relations and activities with trade events to increase consumers' knowledge of Australia and to build a strong image of what Australia is and what it offers to potential international tourists.

Tourism Australia categorises its international markets (countries) into four tiers. These tiers are based on: spend and dispersal objectives; target segments; marketing costs; and relevant external factors, such as the strength of the source market economy. The level and type of international marketing activity varies between countries and is based on these tiers.

Audit objective, scope and methodology

The objective of this audit was to assess the effectiveness of Tourism Australia's governance arrangements, the management of its marketing contracts, and whether outcomes are being achieved. The audit reviewed Tourism Australia's:

• procurement processes for selecting service providers;
• management of service provider contracts; and
• governance framework including planning, performance management and reporting.

Overall Conclusion

Tourism Australia operates globally in a competitive environment. It has primary responsibility for international tourism marketing and also partners with STOs and the tourism sector to increase the overall reach of its marketing activities. Tourism Research Australia also provides research and forecasting data to better understand the consumer, and to inform industry and market development.

The majority of Tourism Australia's marketing activities are delivered through its major global contracts for creative development and media placement services. Digital services, including the tourism online gateway australia.com, are also delivered under contract arrangements. These three contracts consumed approximately thirty five per cent of Tourism Australia's total budget between 2004–05 and 2006–07, underlining the importance of Tourism Australia having effective processes for selecting and managing its service providers.

Tourism Australia's policies and guidelines provide a sound framework for undertaking complex procurements and managing its contracts. However, relevant guidelines were not followed when procuring its global creative development and media placement services and, to a lesser extent, digital services. In particular, procurement plans were not developed and the risks to the successful completion of these procurements were not assessed.

The assessment and selection process for digital services was generally well done. However, the creative development and media placement tenders were re evaluated at the request of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) following concerns raised by the former Minister about the evaluation process for short listing submissions. The documentation to support the original assessment was also not comprehensive and, as a consequence, the selection of these service providers lacked transparency.

The services provided under these major contracts, which to date are valued at in excess of $184 million⁸, are fundamental to the success of Tourism Australia's marketing initiatives. The contracts accurately reflected the services to be provided. However, the media placement and creative development contracts did not include performance information that would enable Tourism Australia to evaluate the effectiveness of the services provided even though, as part of a review of the draft contracts, this was recommended. These contracts were due to end in June 2008 and have been extended to August to allow for transition arrangements to be put in place.

Although Tourism Australia has recently re tendered for these services, it has not evaluated the current contracts to determine the extent to which the services provided contributed to Tourism Australia meeting is statutory objectives.⁹ It will be important when negotiating new contracts that Tourism Australia includes performance indicators that will enable it to assess whether the services provided under these contracts are achieving the objectives of the contract and, ultimately, assisting Tourism Australia to achieve its outcomes.

Tourism Australia and its providers are generally complying with contract requirements. It is apparent that Tourism Australia has implemented better contract management practices for the later digital services contract and applied some ‘lessons learned' from its earlier contracting experiences.

As would be expected with a global organisation such as Tourism Australia, there is variation across regions in how marketing projects are delivered under the global contracts. Tourism Australia could draw on areas of better practice across the regions to achieve greater consistency in the preparation of project briefs and assessment of the risks to projects. In addition, if Tourism Australia is to be in a position to demonstrate the impact of its marketing projects, the project objectives should be measurable and the key performance indicators (KPIs) appropriate. The effectiveness of each project is central to how Tourism Australia assesses its overall performance in meeting its outcome and statutory objectives.

Tourism Australia needs to balance operating in a commercial environment with its mandate as a government agency, working within an accountability framework and being responsible to the Minister for Tourism and, through the Minister, to the Parliament. The CAC Act and the Act largely determine the governance requirements of Tourism Australia and its Board. These requirements are incorporated in the Board's Charter, which also includes the Board's role and responsibilities, collectively and as individual directors. The Charter is a document that generally, establishes a sound management and governance framework for Tourism Australia and the Board.

However, a number of industry stakeholders expressed the view that the perceived conflicts of interest of Board members are a major risk to Tourism Australia's reputation. It is therefore important, particularly in the competitive tourism industry, that the decisions of the Board are transparent and that any perceived or actual conflicts are being (and are seen to be) appropriately addressed. The Board did not adhere to the procedures, outlined in its Charter for managing potential conflicts of interest and revised the Charter to reflect its practices rather than procedures being changed to meet the Charter's requirements.

Tourism Australia is to report annually against its expected outcome in the Resources, Energy and Tourism Portfolio Budget Statements (PBS), its statutory objectives in the Act and its corporate plan. It has found reporting its performance against these requirements difficult. Currently, there is no clear alignment between the statutory objectives, Tourism Australia's performance framework in its corporate plan and the stated outcome and output groups in the PBS. Also, the indicators used to measure Tourism Australia's performance are primarily for the industry as a whole rather than the success or otherwise of Tourism Australia's marketing activities. Evaluating the impact of its projects, aggregating these results and developing intermediate outcomes, would place Tourism Australia in a better position to measure its own effectiveness and impact.

The ANAO has made three recommendations aimed at improving Tourism Australia's governance arrangements, relating in particular to: revised conflict of interest procedures; strengthening its risk management framework; and reviewing its planning and performance management framework.

Tourism Australia's response

Tourism Australia accepts the recommendations of the ANAO performance audit and is taking action to give effect to them. The ANAO report notes that Tourism Australia's policies and guidelines are consistent with the Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines (CPGs) and provide a sound framework for undertaking complex procurements and managing its contracts. Tourism Australia progressively improved its processes to address the issues raised in relation to the creative development and media placement contracts which were entered into in 2005. The selection process for new creative and media placement contracts that commenced in February 2008 was rigorous, transparent and conducted in full accordance with the CPGs. The Tourism Australia Board is currently reviewing its Board Charter to appropriately reflect procedures for dealing with potential conflicts of interest. The Board's current process follows the standard practice where the Chairman seeks declarations of conflict or interest in any matter by any Board member for any issue to be discussed and then, depending on the nature of such conflict or interest, the Board member concerned is asked to vacate the room while the matter is discussed. The minutes of Board meetings reflect this practice.

Key findings

Selecting and contracting service providers (Chapter 2)

Tourism Australia is dependent on the performance of its service providers to achieve its objectives and outcomes. As previously noted, it currently has major contracts in place to deliver its creative development, media placement and digital services. It also has cooperative partnerships with two major airlines and had global media arrangements to deliver joint marketing initiatives. All contracts and agreements are for three years and were entered into in 2005, except the digital service agreement that was entered into in 2006.

Procurement of media placement and creative development services

Tourism Australia's procurement guidelines are consistent with the Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines 2005 (the CPGs) and provide a sound basis for undertaking complex procurements. The guidelines require a business case and appropriate procurement plan to be developed for each procurement. Tourism Australia developed appropriate business cases for each procurement. However, a procurement plan that included an assessment of the risks associated with the procurement and an evaluation methodology was not developed for the creative development and media placement services. This lack of planning contributed to the following shortcomings:

• lack of transparency in evaluating tenders and not comprehensively addressing all service requirements (criteria that would be assessed and any related sub criteria);
• insufficient consideration of tenderers' financial viability; and
• campaign work starting before contracts for creative development and media placement services were in place.

Evaluating tenders

Evaluation committees were established to assess all tenders. The documentation supporting the initial short listing process and assessment of the tender submissions did not clearly demonstrate how the evaluation committees' scores against some selection criterion were determined. Weightings were applied to and ratings were given for most criteria¹⁰. However, for others such as the Government criteria there was only a rating of ‘good' or ‘average' with no further information provided to qualify either rating. This could have been addressed if a narrative justifying the ratings had been included, increasing the transparency of the committees' evaluation. In contrast to these procurements, the documentation supporting the later digital services assessment included narratives and justifications for the scores against each criterion. As a result, the assessment committee was able to provide more detailed information to the Board.

Concerns relating to short listing process

The former Minister had concerns about the evaluation process for short listing submissions and requested PM&C to undertake a review of the creative development and media placement tender process. PM&C requested Tourism Australia to re evaluate the submissions to address concerns relating to the criteria used to assess these submissions. PM&C also requested that the Board's Audit Committee review the re evaluation process. All submissions were re evaluated, not just the short listed tenderers. A summary table of ‘re evaluated' results was provided to the Audit Committee along with the revised weightings for each criterion. The original ranking of submissions did not change.

As the weightings to the awards sub criteria had also been changed after the initial evaluation process had commenced, the Committee requested a further scenario test and additional information on the timing of the decision to establish scoring methodology for this criterion. Legal advice on the implications of this change to the evaluation methodology indicated that the process followed by the evaluators had minimised the risk of allegations of bias. The Committee advised the Board that the scenario testing had satisfactorily addressed the issues raised by PM&C.

Consideration of financial viability

Tourism Australia's internal auditor considered that the financial viability of tenderers for all three services was not given adequate emphasis. This issue was raised for digital services when consideration was being given to varying the contract from $4.5 million to $15.1 million for Phase Two and whether the provider had the financial capacity to deliver against the revised contract.¹¹ To mitigate any financial risks, the contract was novated to include the Australian parent company as a party to the contract.

The financial viability of service providers is critical to the success of the contracts. The weighting applied to the financial viability of tenderers for creative development and media placement was a maximum of two per cent of the total score (100 per cent). The Request for Tender (RFT) documentation also outlined that Tourism Australia could conduct a probity inquiry to determine financial viability, corporate history and whether there was any significant litigation—past, present or pending. However, Tourism Australia advised that no probity inquiries were undertaken for these procurements.

Probity of the evaluation processes

Probity advisers are typically engaged for high-risk and complex procurements. However, no adviser was engaged for the creative development and media placement procurements until concerns were raised by PM&C. Tourism Australia appointed its Risk and Administration Manager as its internal probity adviser. The probity adviser was not required to produce a probity plan or report but the re evaluation report noted that he confirmed and checked the revised scores. In contrast, the digital services procurement process included the appointment of an internal probity adviser, who developed a probity plan and provided ongoing advice, and an external probity auditor who audited the process against the plan.

Work commencing before contracts were in place

Completion of Tourism Australia's 2005–06 work program required work on a new global campaign to commence in July. This was a contributing factor to Tourism Australia requesting the preferred tenderers to begin work before the contracts were executed in October 2005. Tourism Australia considered it had managed the contracting risk by not paying invoices until the contracts were signed, although it had requested that services commence. Tourism Australia's risk mitigation method was ineffective because its request for services to be provided created an obligation, whether or not the contracts were executed.

Developing the contracts

In developing a contract, it is important to establish a clear statement of deliverables and an effective performance management regime. The development of contracts should also incorporate an assessment of risks and appropriate provisions to ensure that the contract meets all legal and policy requirements.¹²

Creative development and media placement contracts

Tourism Australia did not undertake a thorough assessment of risks before entering into, or during, contract negotiations but engaged a consultant to review the draft contracts. The consultant made a number of recommendations in relation to: the services to be included in the retainer; reviews of the retainer and hourly rates; and reviewing performance against KPIs (provided by the consultant). However, only those recommendations relating to the amounts for, and reviews of, the retainer fees were incorporated in contract revisions. Tourism Australia was unable to demonstrate whether it had considered, and rejected, the other recommendations so it is difficult to determine whether the full benefits of undertaking the review were realised. The contracts do not have performance information to enable Tourism Australia to evaluate the effectiveness of the contracts and the services provided.

Digital services

The digital services procurement involved Tourism Australia looking to expand its traditional marketing methods to include the Internet. To manage the risk to Tourism Australia, the contract for digital services was developed as a two phased approach. Phase One was for the comprehensive scoping of the work and implementation was undertaken in Phase Two. The contract for Phase One and the Statement of Works (SoWs) for Phase Two included deliverables, each output and the expected cost and met the necessary legal and policy requirements.

Managing Service Delivery (Chapter 3)

Tourism Australia's three major contracts consumed approximately thirty five per cent of Tourism Australia's annual budgets of $167.8 million in 2005–06 and $158.6 million in 2006–07. The creative development and media placement contracts are also drawn on by Tourism Australia's regional offices to deliver projects in their respective markets. To assess how the contracts are used in the regions, an indicative sample of projects in four of Tourism Australia's six regions were reviewed.

Managing overarching creative development and media placement contracts

The creative development and media placement contracts required annual Ministerial approval for the upper limit of funding that could be incurred by Tourism Australia, each year.¹³ The former Minister was requested to approve the annual upper limit of expenditure in June 2006. Prior to approving this funding, Tourism Australia was requested to undertake internal and external reviews to determine whether the contracts had provided value for money and give details of the mechanisms it had in place to monitor and manage the contracts in 2006–07.

Contract reviews

There have been four internal audits and four external reviews of different aspects of the contracts since they were executed in 2005. Broadly, these covered quality of service delivery and whether the services provided were appropriately billed and had not already been paid under the retainer fees. However, they did not include an assessment of whether the objectives of the contract had been achieved or the various projects undertaken within the contracts were effective.

The reviews identified some aspects of good performance and, overall, the services provided were assessed to be delivered at least to a satisfactory level. The reviews also identified recommendations to improve performance, particularly in relation to financial management and communication between the parties involved. Tourism Australia has subsequently taken steps to tighten its financial controls.

Evaluation of creative and media contracts

Although there have been a number of reviews of the creative and media contracts since they were executed in 2005, Tourism Australia has yet to formally evaluate whether the services provided under these contracts, (which to date are worth $184 million) achieved the objectives of the contract. Such evaluations could have informed Tourism Australia's recent approach to the market and development of subsequent contracts, in line with the CPGs.

Delivery of regional projects through the overarching contracts

As previously noted, the majority of marketing projects are delivered in the regions. Each project is included in Tourism Australia's annual operating plan and a project plan that should include objectives, KPIs, the target market, estimated budget and risks is developed for each project.

For each project, Tourism Australia is to submit a brief to the provider, which incorporates the project objective and KPIs. The service providers are to deliver the required services and provide an itemised invoice to Tourism Australia, consistent with agreed contract rates. For each of the regional projects examined, Tourism Australia had checked the service providers' invoices to confirm that the required services had been provided, and billed at the appropriate rates.

A brief was developed for the each of the regional projects reviewed. However, these were not consistent across regions. For example, only one region was able to provide evidence that the risks to the success of the project had been considered and incorporated into the project plan or in a supporting document. There were also shortcomings in the specification of project objectives and in the identification of their KPIs. For example, the G'day Australia Week campaign had an objective that was difficult to measure, namely, ‘….deeper and longer conversations about Australian experiences.' Yet, the project brief for this campaign included a range of KPIs and targets that were used to measure the impact of the campaign.

Tourism Australia does not systematically evaluate the effectiveness of its projects and, currently, is unable to demonstrate what impact these projects have had on their target markets. The lack of evaluation also means that Tourism Australia is not identifying the factors impacting on the success, or otherwise, of the projects or lessons learned that could be incorporated into future projects. The effectiveness of each project is central to how Tourism Australia assesses its overall performance in meeting its outcome and statutory objectives.

Digital services contract

Generally, the digital services contract has been well managed and payments appropriately made and reconciled. The terms of the contract and the SoWs were also met by Tourism Australia and the service provider. Tourism Australia has implemented a number of better practice processes in managing this contract, such as:

• the contract contains performance information, milestones, and outputs that measure the objectives;
• there have been three risk assessments of the contract; and
• the service provider has a comprehensive risk management plan that covers the development and delivery of requirements against the SoWs.

Global media contracts

Tourism Australia's media placement contractor entered into contracts on its behalf with National Geographic and Discovery Communications Incorporated, through the Discovery Channel. The ANAO examined the contracts for three episodes of the Discovery Channel American Chopper Down Under television program, which were filmed in Australia in 2007.¹⁴ Three agreements were developed for this project: a contract between Discovery and the media placement provider for collaboration; a second agreement between Discovery and Tourism Australia for development of the programs; and the third was an agreement between Orange County Choppers and Tourism Australia to build a custom motorcycle and promote the program.

Although the three episodes met Tourism Australia's expectations in terms of worldwide viewing audiences, the Board put the global contracts program on hold in March 2007. This decision resulted, in part, from the Board becoming aware of a number of issues relating to the management of the contracts. In particular, an accounting issue arose over the purchase and sale of the custom built motorcycle, built as part of the program.

Governance arrangements (Chapter 4)

Legislative and policy framework

Tourism Australia's legislative and policy framework largely determines its governance arrangements. The CAC Act and regulations outline reporting requirements and corporate planning obligations. Under the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies (Report of Operations) Orders 2005, Tourism Australia must report annually on its outcomes and outputs and other statutory requirements. The Act also outlines the requirements of both the Board and Tourism Australia in relation to governance activities.

Tourism Australia Board

The Board comprises a Chair, Deputy Chair, the Managing Director of Tourism Australia and six non executive directors. The Board's role and responsibilities, collectively and as individual directors, are clearly defined in its Charter, which provides a sound governance framework for the Board and Tourism Australia. Accountabilities and areas of responsibility are well defined and processes are in place to facilitate communication and reporting between the Board, the Minister, Tourism Australia and the department. Although the Board has been in existence since July 2004, its first assessment was not undertaken until February 2008. The Board was given an oral briefing in April and the ANAO has been advised that the recommendations of this review will be addressed in the coming months.

A number of industry stakeholders expressed the view, in discussions with the ANAO and through survey responses from STOs, that the perceived conflicts of interest of Board members are a major risk to Tourism Australia's reputation. It is important, particularly in a competitive tourism industry, that the decisions of the Board are transparent and that any perceived or actual conflicts are being (and are seen to be) appropriately addressed. The current arrangements for dealing with potential conflicts of interest could be improved if the Charter is changed to incorporate its original content, and intent, in relation to conflict of interest matters. The current arrangements for dealing with potential conflicts of interest could be improved given:

• the changes to the procedures in the original Charter in relation to potential conflicts of interest;
• the large number of interests declared by members and the inconsistent disclosure of potential conflicts of interest at Board meetings;
• one instance in three years of a Board member declaring an actual conflict of interest and being absent while the discussion and subsequent decision was made;
• the lack of documentation surrounding any discussion by the Board relating to potential conflicts of interest; and
• the perception of stakeholders that a relationship exists between business interests, share holdings, and Board approvals and decisions.

Tourism Australia's planning and performance framework

Tourism Australia's annual report must review how it has performed during the financial year in relation to its: statutory objects and functions; corporate plan; and outputs and contribution to outcome in its PBS. To achieve this, Tourism Australia needs a well integrated planning and performance management framework.

Tourism Australia' planning framework

Tourism Australia's corporate plan provides a strategic overview and the annual operating plan and project plans provide detail on activities at the operational level. These plans are approved by the Board and endorsed by the Minister. Although Tourism Australia has a cascading planning framework in place, the relationships between the different levels of planning, the outputs and outcome in the Portfolio Budget Statements (PBS) and statutory objects in the Act are not clear. This lack of alignment makes it difficult for Tourism Australia to demonstrate that it is achieving its outcome. Better alignment would be facilitated by using the strategy map in the corporate and operating plans (outlined in Appendix 1) to link Tourism Australia's outputs to its outcome and by using consistent language across all documents.

Incorporating risk into the planning process

Tourism Australia's strategic and operational planning includes an environmental analysis and marketing challenges and opportunities. The ANAO appreciates that the Board would have considered the risks facing both Tourism Australia and the industry before approving these plans. However, there have been no documented assessments of Tourism Australia's strategic risks or the mitigation strategies developed to address these risks. Some operational risks are identified in the operating plan and at the individual project level. However, a stronger focus on managing risk is needed to enhance Tourism Australia's planning processes.

In February 2007, Tourism Australia developed a risk matrix that detailed a number of organisation wide risks (for example, intellectual property, legal, resources) and their impact on each of its functional areas. The matrix does not identify the source of risk, treatment strategies, and who is responsible for managing and treating each risk. The ANAO was advised that the risk ratings are not based on analysis but rather on perceptions. During the audit, Tourism Australia initiated a review of its strategic risks as part of developing a risk management framework, supported by a risk management plan.

Performance management and reporting

Tourism Research Australia¹⁵ collects and analyses a wide range of data from a number of sources including the Australian Bureau of Statistics Tourism Satellite Accounts and Tourism Australia's brand tracking, international and domestic visitors' surveys.¹⁶ Results from these surveys are published each quarter and annually and baseline, trend and forecasting information is well established. In spite of the comprehensive nature of the data collected, information that relates specifically to Tourism Australia's activities, in contrast to those of the industry as a whole, is currently not always identified and analysed.

The lack of integration between the various levels of planning and reporting has made assessing Tourism Australia's performance against its PBS outcome difficult. This is exacerbated by the broad nature of the outcome and the fact that it is not clearly related to the statutory objects and functions in the Act and corporate plan. By measuring the effectiveness of its projects and aggregating the results, Tourism Australia should be able to assess its performance against its output groups and, ultimately, its outcome.

One way to achieve this would be to develop intermediate outcomes to link its output groups to its outcome. Performance indicators also need to be consistent to enable meaningful comparisons of performance over time. Tourism Australia has a strong and established survey methodology for collecting and analysing tourism data. Improvements in measuring Tourism Australia's performance will require revisions to existing surveys and re assessing how the performance data relating to Tourism Australia is analysed and reported.

Footnotes

^{1  Australian Bureau of Statistics, Tourism Satellite Account 2006–07, ABS, Canberra, 17 April 2008, pp. 3, 7. Tourism GDP represents the total market value of Australian produced goods and services consumed by visitors after deducting the cost of goods and services consumed in the process of production. It is therefore much lower than total spending.}

^{2  The balance (some $62.62 billion) was spent by Australian residents travelling within Australia.}

^{3  As amended in 2007.}

^{4  The regions are: United Kingdom, Ireland, Nordic and continental Europe; New Zealand; the Americas; Japan; Asia – North; and Asia – South, South East and Gulf.}

^{5  Prior to Ministerial changes on 3 December 2007, the Board was responsible to the former Minister for Small Business and Tourism.}

^{6  Prior to the changes in the Administrative Arrangements Orders in December 2007, Tourism Australia's portfolio department was the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources.}

^{7  Tourism Australia Annual Report 2005–06, Tourism Australia, Sydney, September 2006, p. 81.}

^{8  This covers the period 1 July 2005 to 29 February 2008.}

^{9  Tourism Australia's statutory objectives are detailed in paragraph 4 and outlined in the contracts.}

^{10  Government criteria includes: proven ability to work collaboratively; proven process for transparency, accountability and procedures; and evidence of financial stability.}

^{11  Digital Services was to be developed in two phases: $4.5 million for Phase One and $15.1 million for Phase Two.}

^{12  Australian National Audit Office & the Department of Finance and Administration's Better Practice Guide Developing and Managing Contracts, February 2007, p. 16.}

^{13  This upper limit was calculated on the total amount of all projects, detailed in the respective Annual Operating Plans.}

^{14  American Chopper programs are usually based around Orange County Choppers Inc (OCC) building custom motorcycles. They are usually filmed in the OCC workshop or in various locations in the United States. Filming has only occurred in two overseas locations, including the Australian episodes.}

^{15  Tourism Research Australia is a business unit of Tourism Australia and provides a range of independent specialist research services to the tourism industry and support organisations.}

^{16  The IVS surveys 40 000 departing international visitors and the NVS surveys 120 000 Australian residents annually.}