(Bloomberg) -- Welcome to the Better Travel Bureau, where we dive into the business of making tourism more equitable, more inclusive and less harmful to the environment—who’s transforming the industry, what’s changing and is it actually possible?
In 2025, the largest-ever exhibition of Indigenous Australian art will tour five major North American institutions, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. Titled “The Stars We Do Not See,” it’s set to showcase more than 200 works by about 130 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists.
The announcement of the exhibition comes at a key time for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, one year after a majority of Australians voted “no” in a referendum that would’ve granted Indigenous communities a permanent advisory role in Parliament.
If art is one potent avenue to foster understanding, so too is tourism—and travel pros on both sides of the Pacific Ocean hope that one will lead to the other as viewers become interested in planning trips down under, where Aboriginal-led tourism is beginning to take off.
“People are choosing to come and learn who we are, our challenges, but also our solutions—we’re having 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 creating his company in 2019, Mamid has made his livelihood taking visitors on coastal and bush walks in the Yawuru Native Title area, 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’s also leading a charge for Aboriginal tourism in Western Australia, where a record high 36% of visitors participated in Aboriginal cultural experiences in the last tourism season, from September 2023 to June 2024.
“We’re literally contributing toward reconciliation one tour at a time,” he says.
By reconciliation, Mamid means the long-term efforts to improve the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, focusing on acknowledging past wrongs done to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and providing them equal rights and benefits.
Mamid argues that the benefit of tourism is also an economic one. But the sector’s growth relies on a slow and steady game of building both supply and demand. Data from Tourism Australia shows that international tourist demand for Aboriginal tours increased by 14% between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, compared with pre-pandemic levels. At the same time, one of its subdivisions, Discover Aboriginal Experiences, has been steadily amassing a portfolio of 200 Aboriginal-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 US market,” says Nicole Mitchell, coordinator of Discover Aboriginal Experiences, noting that there’s been a 46% increase in the number of Americans opting for an Indigenous tour since 2012. And yet, queries to more than half a dozen Australia-focused travel agents and guides provided scant evidence of actual consumer interest—even for easily accessible experiences in Sydney Harbour or the Great Barrier Reef—proving that adoption remains a steep uphill climb.
Indigenous tourism, generally speaking, is a young industry. Data from Future Market Insights Inc. cited by the World Travel & Tourism Council pegs it at a $44.8 billion industry—with projections to increase to $67 billion in the next decade. (If that number sounds large, consider that it represents just 0.4% of the entire travel economy, which was projected by WTTC to reach $11.1 trillion in 2024.) Despite their status as the world’s oldest continuous living civilization, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are relatively new tourism entrepreneurs, says Bobby Chew Bigby, an Oklahoma-based postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Waterloo in Canada who studies Indigenous tourism and spent two years learning from the Karajarri community in Broome.
That may have something to do with the referendum—though not all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples agreed with the proposal. Indeed Mamid and his family were among those who voted against it, worrying it would leave just a small number of leaders to speak on behalf of some 200 Indigenous communities.
Still, in the absence of political levers to integrate First Nations communities in government, Bigby says Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples see tourism as an important tool to “keep community members connected to culture and country” and to tap into heritage for economic opportunities.
Not-So-Great Barriers
Some of the most impressive Aboriginal-led experiences are in remote places, like an outdoor light show by Wintjiri Wiru that uses 1,000 drones and lasers to tell the ancestral story of the Anangu peoples near Uluru, in the Northern Territory. Mamid’s newest offering is an all-inclusive “Ultimate Aboriginal Culture Expedition” three-day package out of Broome, created in collaboration with Indigenous tour guides from different groups. But many more, like a 90-minute walking tour of Sydney Harbour with an elder, are casual and easy to slot into most itineraries.
Even still, discoverability is an obstacle, say multiple experts, with many of these companies comprised of just one or two employees with little bandwidth or know-how for marketing. Discover Aboriginal Experiences helps by listing tour outfitters in a vetted directory, but even the most expert travel agents have yet to experience many of these tours themselves—likely making them harder to sell.
To wit, a third of Australian tourists who didn’t participate in Aboriginal experiences said they simply didn’t know such things were available. Others held a misconception that all Aboriginal tour experiences are similar.
“As a new business, you have to learn [about marketing], you have to also have the capacity, the time, and knowledge,” explains Mamid, who says the guidance of the Western Australian Indigenous Tourism Operators Council (where he’s a board member) and countrywide conferences like the Australian Tourism Exchange have given him a leg up.
For those who can overcome those initial barriers, the opportunity to contribute to the community is immense.
These days, Mamid’s business is stable enough to donate 50% of his profits to the cultural preservation-focused Mabu Buru Foundation, which he created in 2023 to educate local youth on Aboriginal rituals, artistic traditions, and bush medicine. And other successful pioneers of First Nations tourism have used their success as a springboard for similarly philanthropic initiatives, too.
In New South Wales, Wajaana Yaam Adventure Tours has used proceeds from stand-up paddleboarding tours in Coffs Harbour to fund a school for Aboriginal students that teaches in the endangered Gumbaynggirr language. Nearby Sand Dune Adventures, whose quad-bike tours take you across Stockton Bight Sand Dunes in the Worimi Conservation Lands, helps preserve Aboriginal Worimi culture via the Murrook Cultural Centre, a fully staffed teaching and training hub where community members can learn about guiding, business administration, natural resource management and cultural heritage.
These successes have helped persuade the government to allocate at least $40 million in federal grants to support Aboriginal tourism businesses from 2020 to 2024, though government officials say that funding is fragmented and difficult to quantify in full. Even still, Mamid and Bigby argue that the current sums aren’t enough for a country that is so large and diverse.
If having a global platform—via major art exhibitions or otherwise—helps drive tourism or even just interest in Aboriginal culture, it could be another small but empowering step 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 culture is being talked about.”
Five Aboriginal-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: Go stand-up paddleboarding inside the scenic Solitary Islands Marine Park, halfway between Sydney and Brisbane, to learn how the Gumbaynggirr people have navigated its waterways for more than 10,000 years.
Mabu Buru Tours, Broome, Western Australia: An all-inclusive three-day trip of guided Indigenous experiences can include native bushfood hunting with the Lullumb Aboriginal Community, a cultural gathering with the Karajarri and a luxury boat cruise in Roebuck Bay.
Maruku Arts, Uluru, Northern Territory: Shop the works of more than 900 Anangu artists from 25 communities—from dot paintings to punu wood carvings—at Uluru-Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre. Then learn how to emulate the local pointillism style in a 1.5-hour, twice-daily workshop led by an Anangu artist back at the expansive Ayers Rock Resort.
SeaLink, Tiwi Islands: A 2.5-hour ferry from Darwin takes you to the Wurrumiyanga community on Bathurst Island, where cultural immersion opportunities include a screen printing workshop at the Tiwi Design Art Centre.
Worn Gundidj Aboriginal Cooperative, Victoria: Spend a half-day at Tower Hill, a wildlife reserve inside a dormant volcano three hours southwest of Melbourne, where you’ll spot emus, koalas and kangaroos with a guide from the Gunditjmara community; along the way, they’ll also share their connection to the land and its resources.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.