Showcasing impact: interview with Geoff Buchanan, CFO of Tourism Australia

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Showcasing impact: interview with Geoff Buchanan, CFO of Tourism Australia

Few embody the changing role of the CFO better than Geoff Buchanan of Tourism Australia. With a career spanning continents and industries, from chartered accountancy in Zimbabwe to global leadership roles with Standard Chartered and ANZ, Geoff brings not only a wealth of expertise, but a dynamic perspective to his current role.

At Tourism Australia, success isn’t just about financial metrics – it’s about building a brand, enhancing visitor experiences, and supporting economic recovery through growing international tourism to Australia. In this interview, Geoff shares his unique perspective on redefining value as a CFO in the public sector, balancing return on investment, compliance, and customer experience to deliver impact and future-proof the organisation’s mission to showcase Australia to the world.

Hi Geoff, tell me a bit about Tourism Australia and your role as CFO?

Tourism Australia is a Commonwealth Corporate Entity (CCE) - a public, unlisted company that operates as a government agency. Whilst we do report to the Minister for Trade and Tourism, we’re fairly autonomous in the way that we operate.

Because of this structure, my role as CFO is quite unique. For Tourism Australia, success is measured less by traditional financial metrics and more by the value of the brand and how effectively we’re driving visitor arrivals to the country. While we do generate some revenue, the bulk of our funding comes from the Commonwealth Government, making my job more about getting the best value out of our spending rather than maximising revenue.

How would you define your concept of value as a CFO?

When I first started in finance, value was all about getting the management accounts in on time,: completing regulatory and statutory reporting, ensuring the numbers were accurate, and getting through audits. It was about delivering results based on the past. Today, adding value is more about future-proofing the business for tomorrow.

I like to think of value in three components. The first is our return on investment. The second is the customer experience, which I’d say is equally important – after all, if you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business. And the third component is regulatory engagement and compliance, which has become a crucial part of running a successful business today. In my view, you can’t achieve one without the other two. To support all three, you need a much more diverse range of metrics to demonstrate that you’re adding value and remaining compliant.

And how do you go about measuring value?

At Tourism Australia, we measure value across four key metrics that reflect the scope of what we do. Growing visitor expenditure is a major focus, given that tourism is the fourth-largest contributor to the Australian economy. We use a range of measurements to track how much value visitors are bringing into the country, from their total spend to visitor numbers. Another priority is improving our brand metrics, which is all about ensuring international visitors have a great experience and view Australia as a top destination.

We’re also focused on industry recovery, and whilst total international arrivals into Australia are not yet back to 100% of pre-Covid levels, we’re confident we’ll surpass that threshold by next year and have therefore stopped benchmarking to that date and are instead looking forward to future growth.

And then finally, business events are a big part of how we measure value. People often associate us only with leisure tourism, but we actually play a significant role in supporting business events through our Bid Fund which contributes funding to encourage global conferences to be held in Australia, boosting venue hire and conference facilities and creating substantial flow-on benefits for the economy.

How does being a government entity shape your relationship with stakeholders?

It’s definitely an interesting dynamic, because as a government entity, we have multiple stakeholders to whom we have to evidence achieving value for money from our available funding.

As I’ve said, our primary stakeholder is the Commonwealth Government who oversee everything we do, and support our campaign initiatives through federal funding. In selling Australia as a premier destination we have to be mindful of the challenges to increasing visitor arrivals and how we manage these, as well as to the opportunities. For example, the increased emphasis on ESG and emissions reporting, and heightened awareness by many travellers of the impact of their carbon footprint, can mitigate against long-haul travel. We work closely with aviation partners and others to demonstrate efforts to mitigate this impact and to ensure sound emissions reporting.

How do you go about balancing those objectives?

The short answer is constant reporting. With ESG, for example, we try to be as proactive with our sustainability reporting as possible. As a Commonwealth Corporate Entity (CCE), we don’t have the same level of reporting requirements as larger organisations – most of our obligations don’t kick in until 2026. But despite this, we’re actually ahead of the curve in starting to look at our Scope 3 emissions .

Staying ahead of the game and making sure we own all the data to illustrate our processes is essential to making sure we support the Commonwealth Government’s sustainability goals, and are adequately funded to do so.

For Tourism Australia, success is measured less by traditional financial metrics and more by the value of the brand and how effectively we’re driving visitor arrivals to the country. While we do generate some revenue, the bulk of our funding comes from the Commonwealth Government, making my job more about getting the best value out of our spending rather than maximising revenue.

Geoff Buchanan

Have you had any challenges in getting that data?

Getting the data itself is less of a challenge than the process of integration and analysis. The data we use comes from a huge variety of external and internal sources, with only around 17% of this being financial data. The non-financial data sources are of good quality and up to date, integrating these data sets can be tricky as the data comes in all sorts of shapes and formats, so it’s a massive task to consolidate everything and then use it to draw insights.

We’re currently undergoing a digital transformation to help us address this. We are currently implementing a new procurement and contract management system as well as a performance management tool – both of which will help integrate some of this non-financial data.. Historically, much of this was managed manually or on disparate systems, but the new platforms will automate these processes and ensure compliance with federal standards, creating a more robust audit trail and streamlining operations.

Has this transformation helped you to unlock new value?

Absolutely, but it has been a challenge. In the private sector, when you're looking for a new digital system, you have a lot of flexibility – you’re simply selecting a supplier that you believe will provide the most effective solution at the best price, but in the public sector you are required to go through more rigorous procurement processes to demonstrate competitive processes and the achievement of value for money.

We’re guided by the Commonwealth Procurement Rules (CPRs) which set out specific spending thresholds which require purchase above a certain threshold to go through a full tender process and be reported on the government procurement website, Austender. The thresholds are quite low, so when you're looking at larger procurements such as new systems implementations, campaigns and events or licensing, you often end up going through the full tender process which can take months rather than days or weeks to negotiate, assess and take to contract. For this reason, we typically enter contracts with data suppliers for as long as three years, with options to extend. This ensures we have consistent and secure data over a reasonable timeframe.

For me, I think having a natural curiosity is a key part of the CFO’s role. Wanting to learn and never stop learning is absolutely essential. I’ve been very lucky to have worked across a  variety of roles and industries, and for me that’s what makes it fun – finding a new business, learning about it, and just constantly looking for new opportunities to grow. 

Geoff Buchanan

As CFO, what’s your biggest priority right now and do you see this changing in the future?

Building workforce resilience is a big focus for me at the moment because, in finance and procurement, we really need people who understand government business and its complexities. In the government sector, pay levels aren’t as competitive as in the private sector, so attracting and retaining good people can be a challenge.

Beyond that, procurement is probably the biggest part of my role, and it’s important to ensure we’re evidencing value and supporting the marketing teams at every step. It’s about balancing the speed of execution with meeting the very stringent regulatory requirements to show value to the Australian taxpayer.

Looking forward, I think ESG will continue to become a much bigger part of what we do. And then, AI is another area we're starting to explore, though the government is still designing a framework around it, so we’re not yet allowed to implement it fully.

How do you work with the rest of the C-Suite to make sure finance helps drive value across the business?

Having worked across multiple industries and participated on numerous boards, I understand the importance of really collaborating with all stakeholders. I can't actually say that there's any area of the business that a CFO shouldn't touch. After all, every area of the business, from marketing to offshore offices, is critical in terms of delivering to our annual plans and forecasts.

Today, as CFO you're expected to be a trusted advisor, not just a financial reporter. You're expected to give insights and propose better and new ways of doing things. If we're under spending on certain areas, it’s my job to invite people to pitch new ideas and to think, ‘Okay, what's the ROI on this? Why should I recommend this above another project? Is it aligned to our strategy?’ It's about constantly challenging and critiquing while also having one eye on regulation and compliance.

The days of working in silos are over. It's not just about the numbers, it's about the insights and how they relate to everyone in the team. And I believe that every member of every team has an important role to play.

What qualities do you think are most important for a successful CFO?

For me, I think having a natural curiosity is a key part of the CFO’s role. Wanting to learn and never stop learning is absolutely essential. I’ve been very lucky to have worked across a variety of roles and industries, and for me that’s what makes it fun – finding a new business, learning about it, and just constantly looking for new opportunities to grow.

Common sense is also a big element. I’ve had people say to me, ‘but you've never been CFO of an ASX business or a manufacturing business etc.’ And of course, there are challenges when you take advantage of these opportunities when they arise . But I think far too many people are reluctant to just jump in and try. Sometimes, to be a CFO, you have to wing it and ask lots of questions to fill in the gaps.

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