At a party for 300 travel industry people in Berlin in March, Andrew Dwyer, from Jamieson, Victoria, gave an impromptu performance that nearly brought the house down. Dressed in bushman's gear, he borrowed a guitar, went on stage and sang Australian folk songs to an audience that included some of Europe's most influential travel executives. His spur-of-the- moment act was so popular that he was brought back for an encore.
Dwyer's performance was typical of the approach that made his stand one of the most popular at the huge Berlin travel convention, Internationale Tourismus Borse (International Tourism Exchange). Dwyer, a small country-Victoria tour operator with a background in the hospitality industry, became convinced that in trying to compete in the international market, Australia's tourist industry sometimes lost touch

with what attracted visitors to the country in the first place.
Dwyer, 31, believed the focus too often was on pack- age tours offering five-star international resort-style accommodation, instead of showing international tourists the outback and the bush characters he was sure many of them longed to see. Deciding. that there was a big potential market for "experience" holidays in which small operators gave small groups of visitors a taste of the "real" Australia, he formed the Victorian Tour Operators Association, with his own company as the founding member.
Diamantina Tours, which Dwyer established in 1987, conducts boat tours Around Wilson's Promontory, as well as bush-walking and four- wheel-drive tours. There are now 120 similar companies in the association and Dwyer has received expressions of interest about forming a national body of small tour operators.
"The industry had kept many of the smaller tour operators in the background by calling them cowboys but we're cleaning up that image and taking the small operators to the world," he says.
Judging by Dwyer's reception at the Berlin tourism exchange -his stand generated about 200 enquiries - the world is taking to the idea of "experience" travel. He says the response from the convention, which was attended by 3500 exhibitors from 160 countries, was far better than he expected.
Dwyer is now working on introducing an accreditation system for association members and trying to organise public liability insurance. "We want to get Australia's smaller operators accepted as a vital part of the world tourist industry," he says.
He believes that by high- lighting the things that make Australia different and allowing tourists to experience them first-hand, Australia's small tour operators can win a larger slice of the market. If that means dressing up as a bushman at international tourism conventions, then so be it. "Business is business, but if you're selling the Australian bush experience, then you shouldn't have to do business in a shirt and tie," Dwyer says.
TONY GRAY