Aussies are ditching the beaches to holiday abroad.
Australian holidaymakers are shunning the allure of the beaches and sun back home to holiday abroad.
Figures show that more tourists left Australia to seek holidays abroad than overseas tourists entered Australia. More than a million more to be exact!
Even more worrying is the slump in overseas tourists choosing Australia as their holiday destination. Arrivals last year were up by a mere 3% whilst Aussies holidaying abroad was up by nearly 16%.
The strong Australian dollar is thought to be one factor behind the figures. Aussies are finding that their holiday money is stretching further in places such as the UK and America whilst overseas tourists are suffering as they get less in return for their currency. Cheap airfares out of Australia also proved a strong lure for Aussie holidaymakers.
The managing director for Tourism and Transport, Christopher Brown, said: “Until May 2008, we had always had more international visitors to Australia than Australians travelling overseas in a 12-month period, but those days are long gone.”
“We’ve gone from about even on an annual basis to 1.08 million more Australians taking international trips than overseas arrivals to Australia.”
This is bad news for the economy too as the tourist industry usually generates billions for the national economy. In 2003/4 tourism represented 3.9% of Australia’s gross domestic product and injected around $32 billion to the economy. Now there are fears that trade deficit from the tourist industry could reach $9 billion in 2010/11.
Tellingly, Australia’s immigration industry provide to the tourism industry with many migrants expecting friends and family to visit them in Australia. The Sustainable Tourism Co-operative Research Centre showed that amongst international students more than 70% were expecting at least two friends and more than two family members to visit them during their time spent studying in Australia.
Earlier this year Tourism Australia launched their ‘There’s Nothing Like Australia’ campaign to encourage local Aussies to extol the virtues of their own country to both domestic and international tourists. Over 29,000 photos and experiences were uploaded onto the site and it was deemed a huge success. But was it success enough to give the tourism industry a much needed boost?
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