Friday, March 5, 2010

Tourism Welfare

We are often embarrassed and amused about the ease that other people's hard earned money is redistributed to others in the name of tourism. While other business sectors seem to be able to amble along with self determination, the tourism industry seems to attract more than its fair share of emotive corporate welfare.

We don't believe the actual day to day tourism operators working at the coal-face spend much time contemplating why others should be supporting their industry as they are too busy working on their business. It is the multitude of non-producing individuals and organisations that work on the fringe of the tourism sector that appear to spend a lot of effort qualifying and extorting tourism welfare.

We have nothing personally against the five students that were described as "budding tourism leaders" that were recently dished out $75,000 in the government’s annual Tourism Research Scholarships. But we do ask the question: "If their studies were beneficial and economically viable, why can't private business(es) pick up the tab?"

So what are these budding tourism leaders going to be spending my money on?

Click HERE for full details, however the largest grant of $15,000 will be used to identify "the barriers to separating organic waste in large hotels." Obviously the billion dollar hotel sector is too stupid to work this one out for themselves?

We will be starting early on our own application for next year's Tourism Research Scholarships. We intend to research the question: "Can the government reduce taxation to tourism businesses by slashing silly public expenditure?" Our preliminary research suggests it can!

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