WA town’s bizarre pitch to tourists

TOURISM experts have raised eyebrows at the tourist town of Exmouth after a local suggested this as the reason why people should visit.

EXMOUTH, Western Australia has a lot of things going for it.

It’s close to the spectacular Ningaloo Reef, it’s a great place to spot whale sharks, and it attracts plenty of tourists each year, from elsewhere in Australia and around the world.

But it’s considering promoting a slightly more bizarre claim to fame: as Australia’s first meth-free zone.

The ABC reports Exmouth shire commissioner Ian Fletcher wants the tourist town to be known as a methamphetamine-free zone, which he thinks will be a selling point for tourists.

“We have nuclear-free zones, we have frack-free zones, I haven’t seen any local government that’s made a declaration that they are going to aspire to become a ‘meth-free zone’,” he told the ABC.

Exmouth is known as the gateway to the Ningaloo Reef. Picture: Stewart Allen

The commissioner said the town had a “serious” methamphetamine problem and his aspirational slogan was an attempt to not “bury our heads in the sand”.

But the ABC spoke to some tourism marketing experts who weren’t so sure the meth-free slogan was going to work.

“They’re directing people’s attention to a problem they didn’t even know about,” Sara Dolnicar from the University of Queensland said.

“Tourists who know nothing about Exmouth might think ‘Gee, what’s going on there if they’re aspiring to be ‘meth free’?

“People don’t come to see an absence of something. They don’t come to see that there is no meth. They come to see the reef. So talk about the reef.”