INDIGENOUS TOURISM
DEVELOPMENT, PLANNING
AND BUSINESS SUPPORT

INDIGENOUS TOURISM

What is cultural tourism?

Cultural tourism is a way of uniting peoples from many different backgrounds and growing our respect for one another.

There are many ways culture can be shared through tourism:

  • Storytelling
  • Creative practices
  • Community and lifestyle
  • Traditional foods and medicines
  • Spiritual experiences
  • Special places

Why cultural tourism?

Cultural tourism can provide many benefits for culture, community and Country:

  • Keep culture strong
  • Live and work on your homelands
  • Share your culture and your story, in your own way
  • Foster respect and understanding through visitor education
  • Job pathways for family and community
  • Financial wellbeing

At TRC, we pay our respects to and acknowledge the First Nations peoples of the many places we work. We understand the importance of balancing ‘cultural way’ with ‘business way’ when we are working with Indigenous people on their tourism journeys.

Our specialists use a participatory planning approach to sensitively and respectfully work together with local Indigenous people. This approach fosters trust and mutual understanding from both tourism and cultural perspectives. Local people own and set the priorities and parameters for tourism, decide what can and cannot be shared and decide upon what success looks like for them. We also work with Indigenous communities in national park and protected area planning and the development of joint management plans and partnership approaches.

Working together with TRC

TRC can work with Indigenous people, families, businesses, communities, organisations and support partners, with supportive solutions across all sizes and stages of the tourism journey. From small business start-up through to master and strategic planning, we can tailor the best solution to meet your needs. We follow the Larrakia Declaration on the Development of Indigenous Tourism and work with local people to ensure we are respecting cultural protocols.

Getting started – grants and business planning

If you are just starting up as a tourism business, thinking about tourism or need some advice about what to do next, our team offers a range of support including:

  • Sourcing and applying for grant funding
  • Business idea detailing and assessment
  • Business planning including understanding vision and goals, operational structure, business activation, cashflow budgets

  • Building and defining your product and positioning so it stands out from the crowd
  • Hosting familiarisation tours to learn about other Indigenous tourism products and experiences
  • Case studies and comparative analysis to learn from others
  • Staged pathway to introducing new products and experiences

Building your marketing plan to attract the right visitors:

  • Market analysis – demand, trends, target markets
  • Product pricing
  • Marketing action plan and implementation support
  • Trade distribution strategy

  • Operational planning including human resources, policies and procedures
  • Training and mentoring – tour guide training, business and operational management

We are experts in coordinating, planning and delivering consultation. We respect cultural protocols and ways of working together offering flexible and adaptable consultation programs that include one-one-one, family or community workshops. Our approach includes:

  • Sitting down listening and learning about current tourism and future aspirations, goals, needs and challenges.
  • Seeing, feeling and experience culture – what are the cultural, natural and historical values that are ok to share with visitors.
  • Visualising – using precedent imagery and case studies, we can share a range of visual options to help Indigenous people make decisions about how they would like to see tourism operate on their homelands.
  • Creating the right pathway – deciding what success looks like over the next 10 years, what our short and long-term priorities are and how we get there. 

Looking to grow a new product and experience that requires infrastructure, visitor assets, essential services and other facilities? We can work with you to design:

  • Site plans for new experiences (e.g., trails, campgrounds, accommodation, visitor facilities)
  • Planning, zoning and other approvals required including cultural heritage and environmental impact assessments
  • Co-designing ‘of place’ visualisations and designs of new products, experiences and infrastructure
  • Staged implementation pathway with costings

Assessing and presenting the justification for tourism development. This could be for new tourism products, experiences, infrastructure or other enablers.

  • Evaluating the concept – what is it and where is it, why do we want to do this, how will it work, what is the purpose, who are the target markets
  • Building the case for change – market analysis, demand, strategic opportunities, implementation logistics and evidence of need
  • Economic and Cost Benefit Analysis – assessing the return on investment to the business, region, community, social, cultural, environmental and economic wellbeing
  • Recommendations and action plan

  • Desktop content research and collation
  • Themes and story categories
  • Storytelling workshops including audio visual interviews
  • Preparing content and concepts for ways of sharing (guided, signs, digital, artistic, audio-visual)
  • Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property protocols

Working with destination managers and agencies to prepare Indigenous tourism plans, strategies and frameworks to build and strengthen the availability and capacity of Indigenous people interested in delivering tourism experiences.

Working with the joint management partners to develop joint management plans that clearly define mutually beneficial ways of working together to sustainably preserve, protect and present the cultural, natural and historical values of national parks and protected areas.

Working with or on behalf of the indigenous group/community, and facilitating discussions between indigenous communities and other agencies.

WHEREVER YOU ARE ALONG YOUR CULTURAL TOURISM JOURNEY, WE LOOK FORWARD TO WORKING TOGETHER WITH YOU ON THE RIGHT SOLUTION.

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PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS

Get in touch, we look forward to discussing your challenge.