CELEBRATING AND SUPPORTING INDIGENOUS TOURISM

It’s the perfect time to be inspired by Australia’s best Indigenous experiences with 2020 being Queensland’s Year of Indigenous Tourism and the year Australia will host the World Indigenous Tourism Summit, taking place in Perth from 6-9 April (By the way – Early Bird registration closes 31 January).

AUSTRALIA’S BEST ABORIGINAL TOURISM EXPERIENCES

The national finalists for the 2019 Australian Tourism Award for Aboriginal Tours & Torres Strait Islander Tourism are

Nitmiluk Tours – Katherine, NT
The whole package – accommodation, dining, gorge experiences, caving, canoeing, helicopter tours, and cultural experiences. The ‘Footsteps of our Ancestors’ tour is conducted at a very relaxed pace. Smaller group sizes provide plenty of opportunities for visitors to ask questions of the cultural guides. Each guide shares their own learned life experiences and those traditions passed on from their ancestors, which makes no tour the same as the last.

Bularri Muurlay Nyanggan Aboriginal Corporation – Niigi Niigi (Sealy Lookout), NSW
At the Giingan markets tourists can connect with and buy authentic pieces made by local Aboriginal stallholders, and be immersed in the Gumbaynggirr culture through stories, songs, language and the uses of native plants during the Giingan Cultural Experience which takes place at an important cultural site.

Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre – Melbourne, VIC
This museum celebrates the history, culture, achievements and survival of Victoria’s indigenous peoples, and includes an Indigenous garden, eel feeding, and changing exhibitions.

Go Cultural Aboriginal Tours and Experiences – Perth, WA
Visitors can learn about the traditional way of life of the Whadjuk people, their spiritual connection the country, the river and the animals that inhabit Noongar Boodja on these cultural tours.

Rainforestation Nature Park – Karunda, near Cairns, QLD
Pamagirri Aboriginal Experience includes a dance performance held in a rainforest amphitheatre and a Dreamtime Walk modelled on the Rainbow Serpent, along with the opportunity to learn how to throw a boomerang and play the didgeridoo.

Image from Queensland.com of Mossman Gorge, three time Gold winner at the Queensland Tourism Awards

The winner (Australia’s best Indigenous tourism experience) will be announced at the 2019 Australian Tourism Awards on 6 March 2020.

Writing a tourism award is a huge commitment that not all businesses feel they can afford the time to do. Do you know of any amazing Indigenous experiences that should be in the running to win the award for Australia’s best Indigenous experience? Tell us in the comments below.

STARTING A NEW INDIGENOUS TOURISM BUSINESS

To tap into tourism, Traditional Owners can:

create their own tourism business, or partner with another tourism business
work for and/or collaborate with existing operators – a great place to start and learn
get started with events

First Lesson Cultural Tours

However, there can be challenges faced by those who want to develop a new Indigenous tourism business, as the following case studies show.

Holding a remote Indigenous festival

Working on a strategic plan for Desert Harmony Festival for Barkly Regional Arts in Tennant Creek in the centre of the Northern Territory in 2018 was an eye-opening experience for Tilma Group. We have worked with over 40 regional festivals and events, but never have we seen so many challenges faced by one event.

Not only can distance, cultural barriers, access to talent and cost create challenges, but even the positive act of bringing everyone in nearby Indigenous communities into town to celebrate local Indigenous and multicultural music, art and togetherness sometimes resulted in social challenges.

In spite of the huge hurdles faced, Barkly Regional Arts uses the festival to showcase a year’s worth of new art and music created by the community, and brings in professional artists, musicians and performers from around Australia such as Opera Australia and Fly Factory trapeze, who all spend a week or two providing training to the community in performance and technical skills.

Developing new Indigenous accommodation and tourism experiences

Camping with Custodians is a rich cultural experience developed in recent years by Tourism WA, Western Australia’s state tourism organization, in association with eight indigenous communities in the remote north east corner of Western Australia.

High quality campgrounds have been built on Aboriginal lands, and are operated by the communities. Visitors have the chance to meet and mix with Aboriginal people, and experience local lifestyle and culture.

Tourism WA reported they found the regulative environment so difficult to negotiate, they felt that If the communities had been expected to do it on their own, the projects would never have happened – an experience that will hopefully result in changes to ease the development of new Indigenous tourism businesses.

Tourism WA coordinated the land assembly and campground planning initiatives for the projects including assessments of Native Title and heritage, studies of flora, fauna, hydrology and soils, and planning and building approvals from local Government.

Developing a new Indigenous festival

At the end of 2019, Tilma Group supported Surat Aboriginal Corportation (SAC) in Roma, QLD, with the concept planning of a new Indigenous festival to help promote their project, the South West Queensland Indigenous Cultural Trail.

We supported the team with the development of festival business and marketing plans, and applying for seed funding via the Year of Outback Tourism Events Program.

Although SAC manager Jessica Walsh was very excited about developing the event, she found the practicalities of trying to involve a number of Indigenous communities over large distances a challenge:

What do you think would be good to share with tourists from your culture in your new festival? I love our culture and history. I am very proud to be a part of such a strong culture who have dancing, language, bush tucker, amazing artists and so much more which will be shared at the festival. I think tourists and people who don’t get a chance to see our culture will be wowed by all the things that will be offered through our stalls, traditional games for the kids and our Indigenous singers who will be one of our big performances.

What challenges did you face around developing a new Indigenous tourism product?
The challenges I found were trying to bring together all of the different communities and their amazing talents together in one festival. I didn’t want to miss anyone or leave anyone out but being new to my role at SAC it was tricky as I haven’t formed strong networks in every community yet. Hopefully the festival can help achieve that too.

What challenges did you experience around getting local Indigenous communities involved?
It was difficult to reach out to all of the communities within the South West Queensland Indigenous Cultural Trail region but I am slowly forming some great connections with the Indigenous communities and hopefully once the other towns hear about our festival we can work together to bring them all in to showcase what they have to offer so tourists can visit their towns and experience their cultural sites.

What solutions do you need?
Working with a wide range of people helped me work out what works and what could possibly be a problem for the festival in the future. It gave me different perspectives on what was most important and what I needed to adjust to have a successful festival.

SUPPORT FOR INDIGENOUS TOURISM BUSINESSES

There is support for developing, and growing, Indigenous tourism businesses!

As the CEO for the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada says, “Indigenous tourism needs to be market driven. The fact is, if we want to help Indigenous communities and businesses, we need to create businesses that will be sustainable.”

Destination NSW’s Aboriginal Tourism Action Plan, which was first released in 2013, has seen Destination NSW develop a close working relationship with NSW Aboriginal cultural tourism operators and key state government stakeholders in a wide range of development and marketing activities.

There are now more than 50 market-ready NSW Aboriginal cultural tourism products across NSW which provide enriching experiences for visitors.

For the Year of Indigenous Tourism, a range of new support is now available for Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tourism businesses to further develop their experiences and grow their businesses:

the Indigenous Innovation and Entrepreneurs Program
an Indigenous Tourism Development Service
a $10 million Growing Indigenous Tourism in Queensland Fund
an Indigenous tourism strategy for South East Queensland, the Queensland First Nations Tourism Plan 2020-2025, which sets a pathway toward creation of more tourism businesses and jobs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The following organisations support the development new Indigenous tourism businesses and the growth of Indigenous tourism capacity:

Indigenous Business Australia supports Traditional Owners to start, grow and buy businesses.
Western Australian Indigenous Tourism Operators Council (WAITOC) has supported the development of 32 Indigenous tourism businesses since 2017.
Department of Trade, Business and Innovation Northern Territory Government has developed 14 Indigenous tourism businesses in remote locations across the NT.
Outback Academy Australia focuses on accelerating economic opportunities with Aboriginal communities through land-based business and employment, particularly in the bush foods, botanicals and linked tourism/hospitality industries.
QTIC has a list of resources to assist businesses in the recruitment, management and retention of Indigenous employees, including a number of case studies.

State tourism awards also support Indigenous tourism businesses as planning tools to help them get clear on their

target markets and how their product/service meet their needs
USP (unique selling proposition) and how they communicate that to potential visitors
customer service philosophy, measurement of customer satisfaction, and identification of needed improvements
commitment to staff training and innovation
economic, social and environment sustainability
business goals (and achievements!)
risk management processes, and
collaboration with the tourism industry

SUPPORT FROM REGIONAL TOURISM EXPERTS, TILMA GROUP (US!)

Mandandanji man Lane Brookes of Roma QLD with @kushlagale of Tilma Group

Tourism award support
If you are running an Indigenous tourism business and would like feedback on how to improve your tourism award submission, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

The submission process for the state tourism awards (which feeds into the national tourism awards) will begin around March (it varies by state). Find links to all of the state tourism award websites here.

New tourism business, product or event support
If you need help to determine the best new tourism product to develop, we can help you define the scope of your project with strategic planning and business case development.

We can also support your project by helping with applications for grant funding.

Learn more about Indigenous tourism in our other articles:

Please share your knowledge with @lindatillman and @kushlagale in the comments, such as a wonderful Indigenous tourism experience you have had or a great resource for Indigenous tourism businesses.

Contributed by Tilma Group