ABSTRACT
Remote destinations are fundamentally constrained by a lack of infrastructure and mass transport access, a lack of critical mass, and physical isolation from both markets and business partners (Hall and Boyd 2005). In Australia, changing consumer trends in the marketplace have further disadvantaged remote tourism destinations. Organised coach tourism, which used to dominate tourism activity in ‘Outback’ destinations throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, has experienced a decline over the past decade (Carson and Taylor 2009). As a result, these destinations find themselves increasingly more dependent on independent drive tourism markets. The former dependence on coach tourism has created an extensive homogenisation and a clustering of tourism products in and around a limited number of tourist centres. While this was a viable strategy when coaches brought large numbers of tourists on regular and geographically constrained schedules, the resultant approaches to product development, marketing and management are less well suited to drive tourists, who travel in smaller groups, are more geographically dispersed and seek experiences beyond scenery and icon attractions.
