The Future of Australian Tourism

I was privileged this morning to present a keynote on the Future of Australia’s Tourism Industry to the Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) annual conference, after which I did this impromptu interview with eGlobal Travel Media.

Take a look:

Step into the light

On the eve of a keynote I will deliver in Perth in mid April on the Future of the Accounting profession, here’s an article that was published in the April edition of Institute of Chartered Accountants “Charter” magazine:

The world of accounting will be revolutionised over the next 15 years with a fundamental move by most accountants away from the backline, with its focus on historic figures and tax compliance, to become a forward-looking well-informed wholistic business adviser on the frontline.

So says business futurist Morris Miselowski, who is speaking at an Institute of Chartered Accountants Conference in Perth on April 19.

Miselowski sees a futuristic world where employees work remotely and carry their offices with them in their mobile device which can be accessed anywhere in the world at any time.

“There will be an increasing reliance on accountants, with their detailed knowledge of their clients’ business, for information about how best to manage the business’s financial affairs. Accountants will have access to all of their clients’ relevant business details at their fingertips.

“Much of the mundane donkeywork needed for tax compliance will be outsourced and accountants will become specialist financial advisors who become an integral part of their clients’ thinking process.”

Miselowski says accountants will move from a reactionary role to a proactive role.

“In the past much of the work accountants have done is client-driven, reactionary and done after the fact. In 10-15 years they will be part of a process that works in tandem in real-time with business operators,” he says.

“By 2020 relationships between organizations, people and service providers will be far more intimate, accountants will be part of an individual’s advisory group and statutory requirements will be outsourced to some other country or person – that’s a fundamental shift.”

Accountants’ relationship with their clients will be significantly different.

Accountants who prosper in the world of the future will have moved beyond traditional taxation advice, playing a broader role in their clients’ businesses and offering more wholistic advice.

“In tomorrow’s business model clients will think ‘you are my financial advisor, you are part of my trusted tribe, you work in relationship with me and the others who advise me, you are constantly aware and on; I expect your advice when I ask for it but also at times when I don’t.’ Accountants will know that information because they will monitor their clients, with permission, in real time,” he says.

“This approach will apply to accountants working within a firm and those working externally within an accounting firm,” Miselowski says.

Much of the numberwork will be sent to workers in the future economic powerhouses of China and India. Bigger firms in the US already send up to 70 per cent of their tax compliance work offshore.

“Already book-keepers in India have good knowledge of tax laws in various countries around the world,” Miselowski says.

“The world will become a much smaller place and work will be routinely sent around the globe.”

While at pains to acknowledge that some accountants – particularly in big accounting firms or boutique accounting businesses – already have close relationships with their clients, Miselowski says by 2020 closer client relations would become the norm rather than the exception.

“The growth in the industry as we move into tomorrow will see accountants offer more than just numbers advice. They will offer business growth advice and bring in specialists to assist their client with other elements of their business,” he says.

“Large firms already act as a trusted advisor and offer specialists in various areas of business,” Miselowski says.

“We are already seeing the Big Four employing non-traditional employees – such as experts in online shopping and retailing and online digital advertising – because this is a space about which many of their clients are seeking advice.”

There will be a revolution of business across all levels, and its effects will be felt by accountants who work within a corporation or accounting firm, and in Australia and across the globe.

“Over the next 10 years we will see business change more significantly than we have in many hundreds of years. The financial/accounting world will evolve to meet new demands,” Miselowski says.

”There will be new jobs, a whole lot of new areas we create, and new industries.”

The pace of change in the past 20 years had been exponential, with it not being unusual these days for businesses to amass millions of customers within a year – a rate of unprecedented business.

“In the next 10 years we will move forward more than 100 years of technology and within 100 years we will move forward 1000 years of technology,” he says.

Miselowski says we are living a digital wild west, with few rules to guide us.

“We have moved into the virtual world and we now have an online world where every physical activity we do has an online equivalent,” he says.

Generation Y and Z, the next generation to take over business boardrooms, would have been raised in a virtual world. “They have grown up with computers and mobile devices and are incessantly on them. They see the world as simultaneously physical and virtual.”

Miselowski says technological advance has brought with it information (“we’re drowning in it from Google”); knowledge (“I can go to a blog and get someone else’s interpretation”) but to get wisdom an accountant would need to be consulted.

“What clients in the future will be wanting is the wisdom of someone with specialist knowledge at a time and place that is meaningful to them,” he says.

Advances in technology will allow accountants to mine and capture the number work.

“Accountants’ main role in the future will be in selling the interpretive wisdom. The wisdom sought will deliver different skills, different mindsets and offer different opportunities,” Miselowski says.

“Accountants will have to become good at interpreting information; work successfully with clients to inform them – sometimes in advance of their actions; and become adept at communication.”

He says the move to mobile access to information has already begun.

“We are moving away from a fixed computer and moving into a mobile world. Smart phones recognise where we are, who we are with, what we are doing and do all kinds of things at our behest. Bank accounts, share portfolios and other financial information will be connected in one space and will be able to give you advice, such as which credit card is best to use at this time.

“Within 10 years this will be absolutely normal. Accountants will be mining that information routinely and they’ll know all about their clients, their spending habits and what they have bought.”

Looking further into the future, Miselowski says by 2020 stemcells wil start to be used to grow organs and bones, travelling into space for tourism will be offered, an increasing number of today’s cancers would have been tamed, we will have an understanding of how the brain works and children born then will live for at least 120 years.

The accounting industry will also be involved in a revolution in the way people work, and predicts a third of the workers in the western world will work virtually and remotely by 2025.

Accountants will no longer be physically housed in a building, and won’t work 9-5 days.

“The notion of squeezing work in between the hours of 9am and 5pm is a nonsense. The business world will adopt a project and task model, whether accountants work internally or externally,” he says.

While the need for traditional numbercrunching accounting work will remain, today’s accounting practice business model will be turned on its head by 2025, he predicts.

“In the accounting world of the future numbercrunchers will be a small enclave rather than the totality. The current business model – which sees most accounting practices with a majority of numbercrunchers and the minority (partners) outreaching and outsourcing business – simply doesn’t make sense financially.”

His advice to today’s accountants in accounting firms is to find a specialist niche that can be sold or provided through an accounting or financial firm which is a growth area for the world in which they work.

He advises internal advisors to take on a generalist advisor role because that will also be needed. While there was limited room for businesses to continue to exist in their current narrow model, there was still a need for them, he says.

Future accounting practices will have extremely communicative consultants with a far closer and more intimate relationship with their clients and accountancy would become a much more advice-based people profession.

“Where once accountants saw their clients once or twice a year and interacted more with texts, books and notes, in the future they will be consulted much more often and interact much more with people,” Miselowski says.

“Accounting will become a complete customer interaction industry because there will no longer be any need for clients to use them ‘to get their books done’.”

He says accountants will continue their education by constant up-skilling because they will be custodian of their own career and predicts global accounting qualifications will begin around 2030.

He says the working world had changed vastly even in his lifetime.

“Generations X and Y have learnt, through watching their parents, that employment is short-term and loyalty is no longer required. There are a growing number of employees defined by the notion of six careers and 14 jobs in one lifetime.”
Miselowski notes the huge opportunities open to Australians keen to capitalise on the growth of the economic powerhouses of China and India.

“By 2025 China will be a dominant spending power on the planet and will have a large middle class. India’s growth in consumer demand will be about a decade or so later.

“Australia, in the Asia corridor, is placed perfectly to have a great influence on those economies. Geographically, it is close to most Asian countries and has better time zones than the US and UK.

“Australia also knows, from a financial/accounting perspective, how businesses will evolve. These countries are inviting Australia to share the business wisdom they have and that they are yet to gain.

“There are huge possibilities for Australians in those spaces”.

Do as I say, not as I did

This afternoon I spent some time at #OccupyMelbourne protest site, housed poignantly in front of that great five-star capitalist bastion The Westin Hotel.

This make shift shanty community is one of about 1,000 similar communities around the world that have sprung up in the five weeks since Occupy Wall Street began.

Each city group is similar in its informal offering of library, housing, information, kitchen and sanitation, and although each has been sparked by an urgent sense of social reform there is no overarching cohesive theme, approach or member demographic to the occupants and their required outcomes.

Each city and protest is instead a micro example of the issues and concerns of its unique place on earth. Some protests are more violent, some more pointed in their demands. Others are more general in nature and less politically motivated.

From a futurist lens, this is a fascinating social phenomenon.

The first is that things in many ways do not change, today’s agitated and motivated protesters are taking on the capitalist world created by the previous generations anti capitalist protestors of the 1960′s.

This protest, so similar to ones seen in every generation, does have some stark differences though to those that have gone before.

Unlike previous localised mass demonstrations, sit ins and protests, this simultaneous global people powered outcry is nourished by an online umbilical chord, giving it a real-time global consciousness and connectedness.

The notion of being a local, national, global citizen is one that has grown significantly in its importance over the last two decades and these 1,000 protest cities are perfect examples of how this plays itself out today and offers insights into what is to come.

The sexual revolution of the 60′s, brought about by the seemingly insignificant pill , changed for ever the status and thinking of women. It ushered in a new era of female equality and gave final rights to females over their bodies and actions.

This single seemingly insignificant innovation irrevocably changed the fabric of family, society, our belief systems and our sense of normal.

These protests are a similar harbinger of tomorrow’s world.

They demonstrate, through their ability to easily attract a global audience; spread a message through social media and ubiquitous always on technology; to galvanise and motivate; regardless of outcome is a model of the way that we will from here on speak, hear and react to each other.

This, and more made, for an interesting discussion this afternoon, between Adelaine Ng of ABC Australia radio and myself in our regular look at the world ahead (no audio available).

Futurists’ Idea of Heaven – 6PR Big Weekend – FutureTech Segment – 9 January 2011

Dreams and heaven come in all shapes and sizes, but for a tech and futurist guy in January of each year they only come from one place, the Consumer Electronic Show.

This annual Las Vegas based event is the canary in the cage for what might be ahead as manufacturers and wannabe’s show off the kit they have innovated and want to sell in the years ahead.

In this weeks radio segment Ted of 6PR Perth and I discuss the many things CES which this year seems to come in 5 basic flavors – 3D, PC tablets, smartphones, connected appliances and video games, it is also the first year we have seen car and gaming manufacturers as major exhibitors.

What’s interesting for me is that we are seeing a true divergence of technology with so many devices and applications sharing common tech and spilling over between themselves. There is a plethora of toys on show that encourage us to take our tech into the home, into the office, into the car, into the streets and share it and play it seamlessly one device to another, one location to another.

This is the commercial mainstream beginning of an attitude where the device is not as important anymore, but what is is that we have continuous seamless access to our digital life wherever, whenever and however we find ourselves.

Listen to this segment now

till Facebook us do part – 6PR Big Weekend – FutureTech Segment – 5 December 2010

Facebook is being blamed for 1 in 4 divorces in the United States and in our in-depth comical discussion we seek to find out why and perhaps that it’s not Facebook that’s causing divorces, but people – ah if only they would use it for niceness instead of evilness (Maxwell Smart circa 1960).

Ted Bull of 6PR and I then go onto to travel through Lonely Planet’s and Google’s top tourist destinations for 2010 and those predicted for 2011 and work our way through some really interesting travel apps and websites – ah, where’s the holodeck when you really need it ?1?.

Listen now

ABC Radio Australia – FutureTech Segment – 25th October 2010

Take a dash of the real world and add a pinch of make-believe and hey presto you have a brand new synthetic world. That’s the kick off point for this weeks on air discussion on real and augmented worlds.

Phil and Bev of Radio ABC’s Today program and I work our way through the why, what and how of this brave new online world where we add to our existing physical world digital possibilities that gives us real-time real world information wherever we are, or an alternate world in which to live our cyber lives, buy online, study for post-graduate courses, meet others, travel to exotic destinations or even rid ourselves of phobias and ailments.

We even get into the ethics and morality of these worlds as we laugh and chat our way through another FutureTech segment.

Postcard from the Future – Events 2020

I was recently commissioned by BT Publishing, producers of Micenet Australia, Australia’s leading bi-monthly publication for the business events community, to ponder how events might be in the year 2020, here is a reprint of the article:

Postcard from the Future – Events 2020

I’m sitting here in August 2020, preparing for another conference keynote and reminiscing on how the business events, meetings, exhibition and incentives industry has changed over the last 10 years and how much of it is still the same.

The biggest difference for me over the past decade is that the industry offerings have become far more intimate and hyper personalised and the line between event organiser, client, venue, supplier, presenter and attendee has blurred.

The hype in 2010 of technology, virtual meetings, 3D meetings, social networking and constant online communications being the death of the industry has, as I had thought, not harmed the industry but strengthened it. It has become far more robust with those that innovated their offerings to take full advantage of the changes not only surviving, but thriving.

Technology has continued to enmesh itself in our lives and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the real and virtual worlds, but strangely it has also become less intrusive and far better at discerning and presenting real time in situ knowledge when and where it is needed.

Turning up to events, meetings and venues now, as opposed to 2010, is a self-check in behind the scenes technology driven process.

Our me-centric superphone has already received, reviewed, stored and replied to all our bookings and event briefings. It has booked us into our room, sent our session attendance notifications, dietary and other needs to the organisers and is on standby ready to give us step by step in situ instructions of where we need to go, when we need to be there, how to get there, who’s around us and any last minute briefings we need before getting started.

Behind the scenes organisers now routinely and collaboratively use virtual 3D on line technology to trial venue and meeting spaces, decide on layouts and setups, design theming and lighting. In this online virtual space all suppliers are able to meet, negotiate, test, build and eventually run a virtual audition of the event or meeting and when it’s finalised use the online model as the collective 3D template for every facet of the event.

Attendees have become far savvier and acutely focused on their event needs. Long before deciding to attend they tap into their online communities to engage with prospective attendees, organisers, sponsors, suppliers, venues, speakers, industry delegates and other interested participants to get a real sense of what the event or meeting may be and how best, if at all, to attend.

Attendance decisions in the past were often influenced by a narrow band of work colleagues or networks, but now information, comments and critiques come from everywhere and the decision making process has shifted to include and value a wider circle of influence.

Events and meetings have also evolved over the past decades offering a far more diverse range of attendance options ranging from the traditional entire event in person attendance, to being able to choose and pay only for those specific segments you want to attend either in person or online, through to complete virtual and online opportunities to attend and participate. These even include post event online pay per view opportunities to watch previously delivered content and presentations.

One of the other interesting shifts I’ve seen over the last decade is events and meetings being commissioned by members of self-assembled interest groups that have spent time on line with each other around their professions, hobbies, experiences, needs or interests and have the community desire and numbers to turn their ad hoc interaction into an event or meeting .

The demands of these groups have spawned a new breed of meeting specialist, someone who is capable of pulling together a multi-faceted online and offline event or meeting often with very short lead times, in a less formal or structured manner and in what may have once been considered less traditional meeting venues or spaces.

The other interesting change looking back is that it is now far more common for disparate suppliers, venues and organisers to work collaboratively and share resources and to come together around a tender or event and then disband only to form again with others as the need requires.

Looking around the year 2020 the meetings, events, incentive and exhibition companies that have thrived and grown over the last decade have been those that have embraced the changes.

They have clearly understood what they do but have constantly been willing to innovate and adapt, to find new markets and new opportunities and not been afraid to reach out and grab for them.

I’d love to know what you see ahead for the travel, meeting and events industry