Australia: Australia Tourism Profile

Australian tourists return home

With the Australian dollar returning to below parity with the US dollar and Australia’s Generation Y settling down next their globetrotting years in order to have a family, Australia’s holidaymaking desires are shifting closer to home. Family holidays, fly-drive holidays and the theme park destinations of Queensland have all been revived, Queensland being given an additional boost from 2013 being a year that was refreshingly natural disaster-free.

The mining boom is over, the dining boom begins

Much of the increase in Australian tourism in recent years has been business travel related to the mining boom. With the mining boom slowing in 2013, the driving force that was business travel is fading with it. On the upside, this has led to a drop in the Australian dollar, thereby making Australia a additional affordable destination for leisure travellers for whom the appeal of Australia’s clean environment is strong. Tourism Australia is determined to take full chance of this reputation of cleanliness in promoting Australia as Restaurant Australia, building Australia’s reputation as a food destination. Cleanliness is an significant attribute in food, particularly for Chinese tourists.

Australia’s airlines are losing altitude

Australia’s two major airlines – Qantas and Virgin Australia – both made a loss in the initial half of FY2014, partially the result of a capacity war between the two carriers, and partially due to growing competition on international routes.

Online travel agents stagnate as consumers go direct

Australian holidaymakers are increasingly booking their holidays online, and whilst at the start of the review period, the majority were facilitating this through an online travel agent, consumers instead increasingly prefer to go due to their preferred airline or hotel chain. In order to maintain their relevance, online travel agents are turning to offering package holidays. It is early days from presently on, but the results so far are promising. With package holidays being the primary travel product sold by offline travel agents, the gradual erosion of offline travel is likely to continue.

Tourism booms, but will there be enough rooms?

Australian holidaymakers, having spent the last few years of the review period holidaying overseas to take chance of the high Australian dollar, are returning home. Euromonitor International believes that the estimate period will be a golden era for domestic tourism with family holidays to destinations such as Queensland performing particularly well, supporting increase for low cost carrier airlines, private accommodation, airport leisure car rental and online package holidays. With domestic tourism booming at the same time as independent travel from China emerges as one of Australia’s prime target markets, the current pressure on investing in hotel supply in Australia will only grow additional intense.

Additional travellers going out of Australia than coming in

The Australian dollar rose against most major currencies in 2010 and the cost for Australians of travelling overseas fell. The cost of holidaying in Australia, on the other hand, rose. The result of this was predictable; potential arrivals remained away, particularly European backpackers due to the economic woes happening in their home nations. Australians themselves decided that Australia was too expensive for a holiday and decided instead to travel to alternative outbound destinations such as Bali, Thailand and Fiji.

Australian travel and tourism turns to social media

Australia has attempted a lot of strategies to stand out from the crowd part other nations to attract inbound tourists, inclunding resorting to the use of swearwords, as in the presently notorious ‘Where the Bloody Hell Are You?’ campaign. During 2010, Australian tourism authorities attempted to encourage people, inclunding its citizens, to tell the world what they love about Australia through the ‘There’s Nothing Like Australia’ campaign, in which Tourism Australia has asked people what it that makes Australia incomparable.

Jetset Travelworld merges with Stella

Next merging with Qantas Holidays and Qantas Business Travel to create a vertically integrated travel business, Jetset Travelworld took the next step towards setting itself up for the difficult retail travel environment ahead in which consumers will book an ever increasing proportion of their travel retail products online. Jetset Travelworld acquired Stella Travel Services Holding Pty Ltd, which includes Harvey World Travel, the second major travel retailer in Australia. Jetset Travelworld is presently almost as large as the leaders in Australian travel retail, Flight Centre, and is likely to continue to thrive as long as Australians continue to holiday abroad in ever increasing numbers.

China Southern Airlines offers new source of tourists

Using the slogan ‘Australia: It’s Really Not That Far’, China Southern Airlines is aggressively promoting Australia as a destination for Chinese tourists, having decided that Australia is the long haul destination with the highest potential for outbound tourism in China. Thus, China’s position as a major source country for inbound arrivals in Australia is set to boom, doubling over the estimate period to reach 876,000 arrivals by 2015. There are some concerns, however, that given Australia’s lack of new hotel supply in recent years, that the country will be unable to provide sufficient suitable accommodation should this projected boom in fact eventuate.

Next of Australian tourism means business

As the relative price of the Australian dollar is set to remain high over the estimate period, and low-cost carriers continue to expand, Australians will take their holidays abroad additional often, most likely at a higher rate than inbound arrivals. Business travel, however, can be expected to remain resilient within Australia. This will provide plentiful opportunities for hotels, airlines, travel agents and car rental companies, which can cater to corporate business travellers. Furthermore, Australia’s city centres, where business travel tends to be focused, will as well benefit from the knock-on effects of the high levels of business travel. Despite the bright outlook for business travel in Australia, those operators which focus upon leisure travel, inclunding destinations across much of Queensland will continue to struggle over the estimate period.