Managing local tourism: building sustainable tourism management practices across local government divides

Increasingly, the challenge for local government in managing tourism is not in preparing plans and policies or undertaking new initiatives but in collaborating across internal organisational silos and across artificial administrative boundaries to provide a more integrated approach. The Managing Local Government Master Class was a programme designed to develop a ‘joined-up’ integrated approach to local government tourism management. This article outlines the Master Class approach within the increasingly complex context facing Australian local governments, and discusses two applications in Northern Rivers, NSW and Perth's Eastern Metropolitan Region. It was found that while the Master Class offers a mechanism to increase collaboration and leverage the benefits of working more effectively within and across councils, there remain political and administrative impediments to improved collaboration.