SYDNEY — Australia has a few help-wanted ads it would like you to take a look at.

There is this opening in the Australian state of New South Wales: Chief Funster. Responsibilities? Review festivals and events, tweet about them and be a “Sydney VIP.” Meanwhile, Western Australia is hunting for a “Taste Master,” whose duties include eating the state’s tastiest food, seeking out its finest produce and uncovering the best bars and restaurants.

But behind the jobs’ impressively lighthearted descriptions lies a serious goal: resuscitating the country’s tourism industry, which experts say has about 36,000 unfilled positions and has been hit hard by a strong Australian dollar. The segment represents about 2.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

The novelty listings are part of a viral marketing campaign called “Best Jobs in the World” by Tourism Australia, the government body tasked with attracting visitors in an increasingly competitive global tourism market to visit one of the world’s most expensive and remote destinations.

The campaign aims to promote Australia’s Working Holiday Maker program, in which 18- to 30-year-olds from nearly 30 countries can spend a year living and working Down Under. The promotion expands on a 2009 effort by Tourism Queensland in which applicants vied for a six-month gig as caretaker of a tropical island paradise, which attracted 35,000 applicants. Tourism Australia, which started the current campaign March 5, says it has received 250,000 applications in the first week, this time around.

But while the campaign highlights the “holiday” aspect of the program, it is the “working” part that is of the most concern to Australia’s tourism and hospitality sector. The country is in the midst of a mining boom that has lured thousands of young workers into resource-related fields, leaving tourism, manufacturing and many other sectors of the Australian economy short of skilled labor.

And the Australian dollar, which has soared in recent years because of the mining boom, has driven up costs, discouraging young tourists at precisely the time when they are most needed to offset those labor shortages, said Trent Zimmerman, acting chief executive of the Tourism Transport Forum, a lobbying group.

“The advantage of working holiday makers of course is that they’re people traveling here for a set period of time, so they allow us to meet the short-term needs of the employment market, which are being affected by things like the staggering, vacuuming power that the mining industry has in terms of employees,” he said in an interview. “So it helps alleviate the short-term ups and down in the labor market.”

The tyranny of distance — Sydney is about 16,000 kilometers, or 10,000 miles, from both New York and London — has traditionally been the main barrier to tourism in Australia, despite its array of world-class beaches and sites like the Sydney Opera House and Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock. Technological and commercial innovations have driven airfares down in recent decades, leaving the inflationary pressures of the mining boom the biggest remaining obstacle, said Felicia Mariani, managing director of the Australian Tourism Export Council.

“Probably what has been a challenge over the last couple of years in particular is the increasing cost of visiting Australia,” she said. “So while the cost of getting here is not so much the issue, it is the cost once you’re here.”

Australia was the 42nd most visited country in the world in 2011, with 5.9 million, or 0.6 percent, of global arrivals. At the same time, however, it was ranked eighth in terms of global tourism receipts, taking in $31.4 billion, or 3 percent, of the money spent on tourism globally, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization. Thanks to the strength of the dollar, even though its share of arrivals fell 0.2 percent compared with the previous year, its share of receipts rose 5.4 percent.

The youth market — people 15 to 30 years old — represents 26 percent, or about 1.6 million, of international visitors to Australia. In addition to providing labor, particularly in rural areas where the draw from high mining wages is particularly enticing for locals, they stay longer than other tourists and spend more money. Working vacationers spend 13,000 Australian dollars, or about $13,300, on average during their yearlong stays, according to Tourism Australia.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/business/global/luring-workers-to-australias-tourism-industry.html?partner=rss&emc=rss