With arrivals up 5%, bringing 8.5 million international visitors each year, the export tourism industry is maintaining its strong contribution to Australia’s economy.
The latest tourism industry performance figures, the International Visitor Survey (IVS) results, show the industry is continuing to record strong growth with international visitor spending now sitting at $43.9bn annually.
With arrivals up 5%, bringing 8.5 million international visitors each year, the export tourism industry is maintaining its strong contribution to Australia’s economy, but ATEC MD, Peter Shelley warns we are seeing trends which need to be addressed by the Government in order to sustain future growth.
“While the China market continues to grow with 1.3 million visitor arrivals from that market in the past year, bringing $11.7bn in spending, the reduction in the rate of growth is being monitored by the industry,” Mr Shelley said.
“This slowing in the number of Chinese visitors reflects a combination of factors, including a change in the type of traveller where we are seeing a greater number of high spending independent travellers and less group travellers.
“Moving towards higher yielding visitors is a positive trend, but the visa required for an independent Chinese traveller are more complex and time consuming – often leading to lengthy processing delays and making the choice of travelling to Australia less compelling than other destinations which offer faster visa processing times.”
Of the many growth markets, India continues to deliver strong growth, with arrivals up 18% to 336,000 and spend up 21% to $1.7 billion while arrivals from Japan are up 8% to 434,000 and spend up 11% to $2 billion.
“As the industry prepares to meet for the Australian Tourism Exchange next week in Perth, It is heartening to see such positive results.”
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
