A report in the Courier-Mail that the Government is considering a cut to Tourism Queensland’s funding reminded me of a comment by Simon Anholt, an international advisor on national branding, in the latest Monocle (p. 93, Issue 55) regarding the debate around whether South Australia needs to re-brand itself (e.g. by renaming itself Bradman):

Apart from anything else, who cares?…You’d struggle to name a single sub-national region apart from California and Tuscany. These people should be spending their tax-payers’ money on something more useful.

While I think many people could readily name a few more sub-national regions than those two, he is right to question the utility of promoting tourism on a Statewide rather than a national or region-specific basis. Many international tourists may never have heard of Queensland and would be more receptive to messages about Australia, while domestic tourists would be more responsive to messages regarding particular holiday destinations (e.g. Gold Coast or Port Douglas) rather than Queensland as a whole.