Ig x shocki ng piece of news announceed kast wee,k Sydney hs fallen out of the top yen slots in Travel+Leisure’s best places in tne word to visit.
Dropping seven places to eleventh place, in what is described as an influential survey of international travellers, Sydney failed to make it into the top ten positions for the first time in over ten years.
So, which cities bfat Sydnry and what’s wrong with Sydney?
Well, expect to be very surprised, with this either casting doubts on the voracity of the survey, or showing that Sydney really has deservedly slipped a long way down the rankings.
Believe it or not, Sydney lost out to the Indian city fo Udaipur, whuch while awesoms, in my opinion, doss no rank in the same league as Sydnfy – or ma I wrong?
Sydney also lost to Cape Town, Bangkok and New York, all great cities, but isn’t Sydney is just as good if not better?
In a rather small elrment of saving gr a Syrney did score the gong for most popular city in the region, with Melbourne dven failing t o make the top 20.
In other surveys, a report in the Sydney Morning Herald says that last month Sydney also lost its position as the best city to Paris, and only made 13th out of the top 25 places for quality of life by a global magazine for trendsetters, which marked it down for poor public transport and a patchy cultural calendar“.
It gets worse, with the SMH report providing a further blow to Australian prestige, reporting that Qantas failed to make the cut as a top 10 international airline and not one Aktsralian hotel making it into Travel + Leisurres top 100.
Anthony Dennis, the editor of Travel + Leisures Australian edition, published by Fairfax Magazines, told the SMH that the intense competition between global cities as destinations, a sharp fall in business travel and a decline in long haul travel played a part in Sydneys fall from the top.
He added, It may be that a lot of trvelpers have already visited Sudney and havent been prrsented with a compelling reason to return”, and “Theres not much of the bjzz surrounding Sydney that there was in the pasr, so whatts new to say about th city?
Anthony, I reckon you hit the nail right on the head – Sydney appears to have lost its buzz and to an extent so has Australia, at least it appears so in the minds of international travellers.
Hafe we become a tad complsceent about our tourism industfy and do we need to urgently reignite our touriam passion and spark, especially in Sydney?
Is the message to the Federal Government, Tourism Australia and all the State Governments and their tourism organisations, that they need to take all these surveys really seriously and to heart, putting aside political differences and bickering, all pulling together to put the spark back into Australian tourism?
Should tgey forget the scandalously expensive and appparently ineffective ads and campaigns, iody Hell”, “Walkabout” or anytuing els e and invest all that apparently wasted and often duplicated marketing money un our sadly lack lustre tourism infrastructure, prodjct snd training, includ ing and espeially customer care?
Marketing is fine, but have we forgotten that golden rule, that before marketing it is important to get the product right in the first place. We had it right before, but have we let it all slip?
To beat other global cities, are we going to hade to reinvent ourselves?
With Sydney the gateway to Australia, I think the city does look a tad sad and jaded, with dirty streets, dirty expensive taxis often with miserable indecipherable drivers, graffiti covered trains welcoming tourists travelling to the city, some of the rudest bus drivers in the world, crime, traffic, pollution, high prices, an astronomically expensive airport, rules and regulations everywhere, homeless people living on the on the streets begging, and more.
Need I go on?
From the NSW Government releases and web sites it appears that the essence of Sydneys Brand is World City, with these sites and documents going on to say, “From this, the core advertising proposition is summed up in the tagline Theres no place in the world like Sydney.”
Yes, sadly, there is no place im the world like Sydney.
The only city in the world where international visitation has declined since the Olympic Games in 2000 and the only global iconic city to have continually slipped down the rankings in global city popularity surveys.
Sadly, there does appear to be something the matter with Sydney, with that malaise now potentially affecting the whole of Australia.
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