(Bloomberg) — Welcome to the Better Travel Bureau, where we’re looking at the need to make tourism fairer, more inclusive, and less environmentally harmful: who’s transforming the industry, what’s changing, and what’s is this really possible?

In 2025, the largest-ever exhibition of Australian Indigenous art will visit five major North American institutions, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Titled ‘The Stars We Don’t See’, it will feature more than 200 works by around 130 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists.

The exhibition announcement comes at a key time for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, a year after a majority of Australians voted “no” in a referendum that would have given indigenous communities a permanent advisory role in Parliament.

If art is a powerful way to foster understanding, so is tourism – and travel professionals on both sides of the Pacific Ocean hope one will lead to the other as viewers come together. will be interested in planning trips to the West Indies, where Indigenous-led tourism begins. take off.

“People choose to come and learn about who we are, our challenges, but also our solutions: we have meaningful conversations and our engagement is real,” says Johani Mamid, tour guide and founder of Mabu Buru Tours in Broome, Western Australia. , who identifies as a Yawuru, Karajarri, Nyul Nyul and Bardi man.

Since establishing his business in 2019, Mamid has made his living taking visitors on coastal and bush walks in the Yawuru Native Title region, detailing his people’s connection to the land and sea, sharing stories as well as traditions.

Today, Mabu Buru Tours employs up to 18 tour guides and contractors during peak tourism periods. It is also at the forefront of Aboriginal tourism in Western Australia, where a record 36% of visitors took part in Aboriginal cultural experiences during the last tourism season, September 2023 to June 2024.

“We are literally contributing to reconciliation, one tour at a time,” he says.

By reconciliation, Mamid means long-term efforts to improve relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, focusing on recognizing past wrongs caused to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and granting them rights and rights. equal benefits.

Mamid says the benefits of tourism are also economic. But the growth of the sector is based on a slow and steady construction of supply and demand. Tourism Australia data shows international tourist demand for Aboriginal tours increased by 14% between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, compared to pre-pandemic levels. At the same time, one of its subdivisions, Discover Indigenous Experiences, has gradually built up a portfolio of 200 Indigenous-led tours to promote, adding five providers in the first six months of 2024 and seven more in 2025.

“We’ve had the biggest growth (with) the U.S. market,” says Nicole Mitchell, coordinator of Discover Indigenous Experiences, noting that there has been a 46 percent increase in Americans opting for Indigenous travel since 2012 And yet queries to more than half a dozen Australia-focused travel agents and guides provided little evidence of real consumer interest – even for easily accessible in-port experiences. from Sydney or the Great Barrier Reef – proving that adoption remains an uphill climb.

Indigenous tourism, generally speaking, is a young industry. Data from Future Market Insights Inc. cited by the World Travel and Tourism Council puts it at $44.8 billion, with projections expected to reach $67 billion over the next decade. (If that number seems high, consider that it represents just 0.4% of the entire travel economy, which WTTC predicts will reach $11.1 trillion in 2024.) Despite their status world’s oldest living civilization, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are relatively new tourism entrepreneurs, says Bobby Chew Bigby, an Oklahoma-based postdoctoral researcher at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who studies indigenous tourism and spent two years learning from the Karajarri community in Broome.

This might have something to do with the referendum, although not all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples agreed with the proposal. Indeed, Mamid and his family were among those who voted against it, fearing that only a small number of leaders could speak on behalf of some 200 indigenous communities.

Yet in the absence of policy levers to integrate First Nations communities into government, Bigby says Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people see tourism as an important tool to “keep community members connected to culture and the country” and to exploit heritage for economic opportunities.

Barriers not so big

Some of the most impressive Aboriginal experiences take place in remote locations, such as an outdoor light show by Wintjiri Wiru that uses 1,000 drones and lasers to tell the ancestral history of the Anangu people near Uluru in the Territory of North. Mamid’s latest offering is a three-day all-inclusive ‘Ultimate Aboriginal Cultural Expedition’ package from Broome, created in collaboration with Aboriginal tour guides from different groups. But many others, like a 90-minute walking tour of Sydney Harbor with an elder, are informal and easy to fit into most itineraries.

Still, discoverability remains a hurdle, many experts say, because many of these companies have just one or two employees with little marketing bandwidth or know-how. Discover Indigenous Experiences helps by listing tour outfitters in a verified directory, but even the most expert travel agents have yet to experience many of these tours themselves, which likely makes them a harder sell.

Namely, a third of Australian tourists who didn’t take part in Aboriginal experiences said they simply didn’t know such things existed. Others mistakenly believed that all Aboriginal touring experiences were similar.

“As a new business you have to learn (marketing), you also have to have the capacity, time and knowledge,” says Mamid, who says advice from the Western Australian Indigenous Tourism Operators Council (of which he is a member board) member) and national conferences like the Australian Tourism Exchange have given it a boost.

For those who can overcome these initial obstacles, the opportunity to contribute to the community is immense.

Today, Mamid’s business is stable enough to donate 50% of its profits to the cultural preservation-focused Mabu Buru Foundation, which he established in 2023 to educate local youth about Aboriginal rituals, traditions arts and bush medicine. And other First Nations tourism pioneers have also used their success as a springboard for similar philanthropic initiatives.

In New South Wales, Wajaana Yaam Adventure Tours used proceeds from stand-up paddleboarding tours in Coffs Harbor to fund a school for Aboriginal students that teaches in the endangered language Gumbaynggirr. Nearby Sand Dune Adventures, whose quad tours take you across the Stockton Bight sand dunes in Worimi Conservation Land, helps preserve Worimi Aboriginal culture through the Murrook Cultural Centre, an education and training center fully staffed where community members can learn about guiding, business. administration, natural resource management and cultural heritage.

Those successes helped persuade the government to allocate at least $40 million in federal grants to support Indigenous tourism businesses from 2020 to 2024, although government officials say the funding is fragmented and difficult to quantify in its entirety. However, Mamid and Bigby say the current sums are not enough for such a large and diverse country.

If having a global platform – through major art exhibitions or otherwise – helps boost tourism or even just interest in indigenous culture, this could be another small but challenging measure to counter the impact of the referendum.

“Any conversation is a good conversation,” says Tourism Australia’s Mitchell. “I feel enlightened by the fact that we are talking about culture. »

Five Indigenous-led experiences

From Sydney to the Northern Territory and Western Australia, here are five recommended Indigenous tours you can easily add to your Australia itinerary.

Wajaana Yaam Adventure Tours, Coffs Harbour, New South Wales: Stand-up paddleboard in the picturesque Lonely Islands Marine Park, halfway between Sydney and Brisbane, to see how the Gumbaynggirr people have navigated their waterways since more than 10,000 years old.

Mabu Buru Tours, Broome, Western Australia: A three-day all-inclusive trip of guided Indigenous experiences can include hunting for native bush foods with the Lullumb Aboriginal community, a cultural gathering with the Karajarri and a luxury boat cruise in Roebuck Bay.

Maruku Arts, Uluru, Northern Territory: Discover the works of more than 900 Anangu artists from 25 communities, from dot paintings to Punu wood carvings, at the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre. Then learn to imitate the local pointillist style in a twice-daily 1.5-hour workshop led by an Anangu artist at the sprawling Ayers Rock Resort.

SeaLink, Tiwi Islands: A 2.5-hour ferry from Darwin takes you to the community of Wurrumiyanga on Bathurst Island, where cultural immersion opportunities include a screen-printing workshop at the Tiwi Design Art Centre.

Worn GundidjAboriginal Cooperative, Victoria: Spend half a day at Tower Hill, a wildlife reserve located inside a dormant volcano three hours southwest of Melbourne, where you’ll spot emus, koalas and kangaroos with a guide to the Gunditjmara community; Along the way, they will also share their connection to the land and its resources.

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