Partnership Australia’s National Tourism Data Warehouse: Preliminary Assessment Of A Destination Marketing System

Much has been written since the early 1980’s about Destination Marketing Systems (DMSs), particularly in the form of case studies most of which seem to reflect a high degree of system failure (eg BRAVO, Hi-Line, ETNA and earlier versions of the Gulliver system). Indeed Archdale has characterised this field as follows: “the overall pattern of systems development in the field has been diverse, geographically disparate and generally reactive. This has led to a confused pattern of business objectives, a marked absence of technical, commercial or data definition standards, a plethora of often conflicting developments within individual countries and little evidence of inter-NTO cooperation or even formal discussion on the issue” (Archdale et al: 1992). Whilst some of such shortcomings have been addressed during the intervening years by new developments, the Australian situation has been similarly characterised by a multiplicity of websites and/or destination marketing systems displaying information at varying levels of quality, content and format.