Institute Of Excellence

02/10/2026

**How can tourism businesses use AI and digital tools to build capability, not simply add more complexity?**

This important question will be explored at the **Build for the Future Industry Forum** in Ararat on Thursday 8 October where we’ll share our signature CTRL+ALT+DELETE keynote presentation.

Hosted by Grampians Wimmera Mallee Tourism, the forum brings tourism operators and industry partners together to explore smarter business, stronger investment and greater resilience.

https://f.mtr.cool/fatjy8nivf

The IOE session will focus on practical AI and digital transformation, starting with the business need, choosing tools purposefully and identifying realistic next steps.

A valuable day for tourism and visitor economy businesses looking to strengthen their capability and prepare for future opportunities.

📍 Alexandra Oval, Ararat
📅 Thursday 8 October
🕙 10am–5pm

Learn more and secure your place:
https://f.mtr.cool/qaqe4n1vmg

Join Grampians Wimmera Mallee Tourism for a practical session around smarter business, stronger investment and greater resilience.

27/09/2026

Today is World Tourism Day.

It has been a big couple of weeks deep in research for an upcoming episode on this year's theme, Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism. Somewhere in that was a strong curiosity about the history of the day itself, stumbling into something remarkable.

For years we have been marking 27 September without ever knowing where it came from.

The man who proposed it was Nigerian. Ignatius Amaduwa Atigbi. In 1971, at a meeting in Turkey, he moved the motion that 27 September be marked every year as World Tourism Day.

The day launched in 1980 and the whole world now observes it.

And for decades, nobody credited him.

He was finally named its architect in Accra, in 2009. Sadly by then he had passed away, and his family accepted it for him. Thirty-eight years after he stood up in that room.

UN Tourism's own history page still does not mention him.

Being in the room is not the same as being on the record.

This story further ignites the true meaning of leadership and legacy, and how easily we treat them as the same thing. They are not. Legacy is what gets remembered, and how we made people feel along the way. Leadership is making sure the right people are remembered at all.

So the question today is not whether we are credited for our work. It is whose contribution we ourselves have failed to name, acknowledge and give thanks for.

Full episode this week. Here's to your excellence and happy World Tourism Day 🌎

17/09/2026

What can your testimonials teach you about your business?

As IOE reviews twelve years of client feedback, we’re not simply collecting kind words. We’re looking for patterns:

What do people value in our training and mentoring?

What must we protect as we grow?

Are we practising what we teach?

This reflection from Michael Hamilton, formerly of the Victoria Tourism Industry Council, is one we’re grateful to revisit.

Try this in your own business: look through past feedback and notice the words that appear repeatedly. They may reveal what you’re truly known for and the standard your customers trust you to maintain.

Twelve years on, we’re grateful to still be standing, serving and supporting businesses and tourism communities to become better today than they were yesterday.

Igniting excellence since 2014. More skill. More confidence. More you.

How about you? How do you collect, store, and repurpose your feedback and reviews in your business?

17/09/2026

Most business owners do not need more information. They need protected time, practical structure and the right support to turn what they know into meaningful action.

That is exactly what we are creating through the Geelong Business IGNITE Program.

Over seven months, we will work alongside local business owners to strengthen strategy, growth, leadership, customer experience, AI capability and confidence.

If you live in Greater Geelong and operate a business there, we would love you to consider applying. If you know a local business owner who would benefit, please share this opportunity with them.

Expressions of interest close on Monday 5 October. Apply through the link in the bio or visit below:

📅 Expressions of Interest close on Monday, 5 October.

🔗 To apply, visit: https://www.geelongcity.vic.gov.au/whats-happening/events/geelong-business-ignite-program

16/09/2026

Are you running your business from a plan, or from whatever feels most urgent today?

In 2024–25, only 26% of Australian businesses reviewed their business model.

Just one in ten actively collected or analysed data to make informed decisions.

At the same time, 42% said uncertainty about economic conditions significantly hampered their business activity.

A written plan will not remove uncertainty.

But it can stop every new problem, request or opportunity from sending the business in a different direction.

And it does not need to be a 30 or 40-page document written for a bank.

A useful business plan should help you answer:

Where are we going?

What matters most this year?

Who are we here to serve?

How does the business make money?

What is most likely to get in the way?

Our latest IOE article takes you through a practical one-page business plan with eight essential sections, a worked example and a framework you can complete in around 90 minutes.

The most important part is not writing the plan.

It is using it when the week becomes busy and a new opportunity appears.

Before saying yes, ask:

Does this move the business towards its three-year goal?

If not, it belongs in the ideas folder, not the calendar.

Read the article and start building your one-page plan here: https://www.instituteofexcellence.com/one-page-business-plan/

What is currently driving your business decisions: a clear plan, instinct or whatever is most urgent?

No 40-page document. A one-page business plan any Australian small business owner can complete in 90 minutes. Free template and worked example included

16/09/2026

Have you ever tried to fix one part of your business, only to discover the real issue was elsewhere?

Most business challenges do not exist in isolation.

A marketing problem might begin with unclear direction.

A sales problem might be connected to pricing, customer experience or the value of the offer.

A technology problem might not need another tool. It might need a clearer process.

That is why IGNITE looks at six connected areas of business:

INTELLIGENCE
Where is the business heading, and what matters most?

GROWTH
Are the right people seeing, understanding and remembering the business?

NURTURE
How do customers and team members experience the business, its service and its culture?

INCOME
Are sales, pricing and financial systems creating sustainable value?

TRANSFORMATION
What impact does the business create, and how do customers feel after engaging with it?

EMPOWER
Are digital tools and AI helping the business work more confidently, safely and effectively?

You do not need to improve everything at once.

A useful place to begin is:

1. The pillar that feels strongest today.
2. The pillar that needs the most attention.
3. One practical action that could move it forward this week.

Take the free Business & AI Capability Audit to see where your business is strong, where attention may be needed and what your next practical step could be.

https://audit.instituteofexcellence.com/

Which IGNITE pillar needs the most attention in your business right now?

06/09/2026

A new season of IOE has begun and we are excited to share it with you first.

Look closely at our new mark, and you'll find something that's been there since day one, hiding in plain sight. Four brackets, facing in. And in the space between them, a star.

That's not a coincidence. It's the ethos we started with: ignite excellence in people. Every bracket in that mark points inward, toward that same spark, because excellence was never something we handed to businesses, tourism operators, or ourselves from outside. It's something already in them, waiting to be built on.

The Institute of Excellence has grown into the school of business and tourism greatness, with industry training and development across eight domains: tourism & hospitality, small business, strategy & planning, marketing & growth, leadership & culture, sales & finance, customer experience, and digital & AI.

It's built on two decades of real operations experience and delivered the way business actually happens: group training, online courses, mentoring and diagnostics for operators, for teams, for the organisations that back them.

Courses, training and diagnostics are open now, so you can start running your business, as you meant it, with more skill, more confidence and more you.

Start your excellence journey with a FREE business and AI diagnostic: https://audit.instituteofexcellence.com/

08/04/2026

Episode 084 of the Tourism Hub Podcast is out now. Search 'Tourism Hub' on where you get your podcasts or click below 👇

🎙️https://www.instituteofexcellence.com/podcast/084-bringing-the-gap-tourism-agriculture-and-community/

This week's episode is a conversation captured at the Australian Regional Tourism Ltd (ART) convention in Adelaide Hills where I sat down on location with Yvette Myhill from Destination Riverina Murray, an incredible tourism leader and region that spans across two states and 22 local governments.

We covered the agritourism opportunity for farms navigating drought. We talked about the gap that still exists between the tourism and ag industries, and who is doing the connective work. And Yvette shared what a 10,000-kilometre road trip with her six-year-old revealed about the visitor experience that no amount of strategy work will teach you until you have stepped into the visitor's shoes.

Here's a clip capturing a memorable moment from Yvette's travels, serving as a reminder to all that experience design can be as simple as seizing an opportunity.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2iQ7VwFDZPsNoQJFZ4gBDA

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/084-bridging-the-gap-tourism-agriculture-and-community/id1147008835?i=1000759912513

Institute Of Excellence is a proud Education and Social Media Partner of the Convention. For more information on joining us in October in Busselton, WA, visit: https://regionaltourism.com.au/convention/