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January 24, 2012 – Australia’s Tourism industry has been a major key industry for the Australian economy. In the financial year 2010/11 alone, Australia’s tourism industry was valued at approximately AU$35 billion to the national economy, representing 2.5% of Australia’s GDP.

Moreover, despite a year of global economic challenges and natural disasters, the 2010-11 financial years alone saw a record number of overseas arrivals in the financial year, with 5.9 million short-term visitor arrivals on Australian tourist visa to Australia or 588 extra visitors a day extra. Also, Australia’s Tourism industry employed 513,700 people in Australia in 2010-11, of which 43.7% of total tourism employed persons were part time. Tourism also contributed 8.0% of Australia’s total export earnings in 2010-11.

However, even with this kind of record, Australia’s short-term outlook for tourism is poor.

According to business forecaster IBISWorld in its latest tourism industry report, Australia is said to continue to lose its share of the global international traveler market with the many emerging new destinations out there.

IBIS revealed that an equivalent of 30.2 per cent of Australia’s population takes an overseas trip each year and forecasts this to rise to 50 per cent by 2016-17.

On the back of a strong Australian dollar, 2010-11 saw a record 7.4 million short-term resident departures from Australia, an increase of 9.9% from 2009-10. Domestic tourism consumption grew at less than half the pace of international consumption in 2010-11, which is only up 2.1% compared to 4.4%.

Though this is a great opportunity in itself for alert entrepreneurs who can cash in on Australia’s overseas travel boom, it would be a poor solution if more tourist operators give up on the domestic market as they chase Asian tourists on Australia visitor visa as domestic tourism is a significant part of the tourism industry, and was responsible for 73% of the total direct tourism GDP.

Australia’s tourism industry has too much of a natural competitive advantage with its vast breathtaking and contrasting beauty – to lose share to other destinations.

However, due to intense pressure, the global financial crisis seeing more international travelers staying at home, and Australia’s high dollar and cheap airfare packages encouraging record numbers of Australians to travel overseas, heavy discounting has forced some tourism operators to cut costs to maintain profit margins, with services the first casualty.

Now, though according to a Roy Morgan Research, there is still a solid rise in the customer satisfaction for guests staying in Australia’s premium hotel chains over the past year, with Crowne Plaza and Sheraton leading the survey, there are still too many slack operators dragging others down, with their little regard for repeat business getting as much as they can from tourists on visas to travel to Australia on their first and last visit, turning a potentially great Australian holiday into a good or average one as they provide poor customer services.

source:
smh.com.au