Geoff Dixon goes from luring tourists to pulling pints

After he steps down as chairman of Tourism Australia, Geoff Dixon plans to pull beers at one of the 14 pubs he part-owns.

Geoff Dixon

One of the first things former Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon plans when he steps down as the nation’s most powerful tourism official in the next few weeks is to obtain his responsible service of alcohol certificate so he can pull beers at the 14 pubs he owns with his family or in ­partnership with John Singleton and investment banker Mark Carnegie.

“It’s only a day, I should be able to pass it,” quips Dixon, as he ends his six-year stint as chairman of Tourism Australia, the government body charged with marketing the country to the world.

Dixon has improved the quality of staff at Tourism Australia since he took over from former Coles chairman Rick Allert six years ago, with most of the new management hires hailing from the private sector. The Crown board member has also brought stability to the organisation, which had five CEOs, four chairmen and four ministers in the 10 years before Dixon joined.

If there was one thing Dixon learnt at Qantas that he brought to Tourism Australia, it was to “make sure you have the right people and you let them get on with the job”.

“This is a top-class management team,” he told The Australian yesterday.

But there have also been regrets during his tenure, such as the bitter feud with Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce that resulted in the airline withdrawing from its 40-year partnership with Tourism Australia, taking its substantial marketing dollars with it. Prov­oking Joyce’s ire was the belief that Dixon was part of an investment group committed to “unravelling Qantas’s structure and direction”.

“I would have preferred we had not fallen out with Qantas,” Dixon says. “I blame myself a little bit for that. But in no way did it really harm the organisation and it did not harm Qantas either. It has allowed Tourism Australia to expand its portfolio of airline partners.

“There was a fair bit of misunderstanding and misreading of the situation. But so be it. It’s a bit of a regret that we are not dealing in any meaningful way with Qantas because it is the largest airline in Australia.

“I am expecting my departure will fix that but in no way has it harmed the organisation.”

Dixon says the spat with Qantas enabled Tourism Australia to bring more airlines on board. It now boasts 17 airlines such as ­Virgin, Singapore Airlines, ­Etihad, Emirates and three ­Chinese ­government-owned carriers as marketing partners.

Dixon also admits that life at Tourism Australia had been quite tough before his appointment.

“It wasn’t easy last decade because the organisation went through a lot of change. We have achieved quite a lot of stability and the organisation has moved back to absolutely its core focus — a marketing organisation. It is regarded as one of the best marketing organisations in the world.”

Dixon admits to “meddling” in Tourism Australia’s plethora of marketing campaigns and says he has helped get the disparate $110 billion tourism industry to speak with one voice.

“Tourism is one of the biggest growth industries in the world, everyone has woken up to this,” he says.

But the rush of Chinese holidaymaker arrivals to Australia caught everyone by surprise with latest arrivals figures for the year to February showing numbers shot up 18.4 per cent.

“Everyone has been shocked by the sheer weight of numbers,” says Dixon, fresh from spending a couple of weeks at his Port ­Douglas holiday house in north Queensland, which he says is his favourite Australian tourism destination. “We bought a place up there nearly 20 years, it is pretty terrific.”

So will Dixon be bored with life post Tourism Australia?

Probably not. Even though he is no longer officially engaged with Tourism Australia he will attend an “aviation gig” in London and represent Tourism Australia in China signing agreements with Mainland carriers such as China Eastern post June 30.

“I have a pretty full life and I do think six years is enough in a job like this,” he says. “I have the ­capacity to move on.”