As the shock of Mike Baird's retirement as premier of New South Wales settles, attention is turning to his likely replacement Gladys Berejiklian.
While she remained tight-lipped about her policy agenda on Friday, one expert has suggested that improving the city for tourists should be one of the top priorities for the next leader.
David Beirman, a senior lecturer in tourism at the University of Technology Sydney, said the growth of tourism to Australia and particularly to Sydney in the past year meant more needed to be done to support the industry.
"When we're doing such a great job in tourism to attract people, we need to make sure we have the infrastructure to cater for them," he said.
"Australia's inbound tourism growth is almost triple the world average.
"That growth has been phenomenal."
According to a report by Tourism Australia, there were 8.2 million visitors last year — an 11.4 per cent increase on the year before.
The main source of tourists came from north-east and south-east Asia; with 1.2 million visitors from China, as well as New Zealand, Japan, Korea, India and the United States.
In the year ending September 2016, there were 29.1 million visitors to NSW alone, bringing in $16.5 billion.
Tourism Research Australia noted that an increase in domestic tourism growth was "partly due to travellers switching overseas travel for domestic holidays".
High-speed rail link
Mr Beirman said it was time state, federal and local governments made a decision to build a high-speed rail link between Brisbane and Melbourne via Sydney.
While it has long been debated, he said a train would alleviate stress on the major airports and increase domestic travel for Australians as well as international tourists.
"A lot of our airports have done a great job to bring in more aircraft," Mr Beirman said.
"But Sydney and Melbourne are the most flown to areas ... and, if given the choice, I think a lot of people would take high-speed rail."
"We've really spent too much time talking about it."
Increase hotels and ports
While Mr Beirman acknowledged the NSW Government had developed "fantastic infrastructure for business" such as the new International Convention Centre, there was a shortage of accommodation for business tourists.
He said the "astronomical prices" of top-ranked hotels in the city was "a big problem", and that more four and five-star hotels needed to be built.
The booming cruise industry in Sydney was also another area that needed to be acknowledged.
The cruise industry grows 10 per cent every year, Mr Beirman said, and the two major cruise ports at White Bay and Circular Quay were struggling to cope.
"We're running out of space to park cruise ships, and while the demand is growing we desperately need a third terminal in a part of Sydney where tourists are going to say, 'wow, we've arrived in Sydney'," he said.
Filling more jobs
Mr Beirman said there were thousands of jobs in the tourism industry that needed to be filled, citing a Tourism Australia report that showed the country had a skill shortage of 38,000 jobs a year ago.
Many tourism jobs were currently being filled by foreign workers on 457 or holiday visas, he said.
"Part of the reason for that is that a lot of tourism jobs are seasonal and not many people want to do seasonal jobs.
"Ideally, what the tourists want is not being served by people from other countries, but to get their hospitality services from Australians who ideally speak other languages.
"We do really need to develop more home-based tourism professionals."
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