Issues & Trends – September 2013

Inbound tourism sentiment rising in tandem with falling dollar, survey finds

TOURISM industry performance and expectations are on the up with concerns over the impact of the dollar on tourism businesses falling sharply as the dollar has eased, the latest edition of the TTF-MasterCard Tourism Industry Sentiment Survey has found.

Tourism and Transport Forum chief executive Ken Morrison said the falling dollar has contributed to a spike in sentiment around international tourism.

“The survey shows that while tourism operators have seen an improve-ment in performance in Quarter 2, 2013 (+11 pts over Q1), they believe the lower dollar will have an even bigger impact for the current quarter,” Morrison said.

“Expectations for international tourism in Q3 jumped 19 points to a record high, with the lower dollar boosting the buying power of international visitors.

“While concern over Australia’s strong dollar remains the number one business impediment, its importance fell 18 percentage points in Quarter 2, 2013 to a record low 45 points.

“With tourism statistics showing growth in inbound arrivals and domestic travel, tourism is well-positioned to help Australia in the post-mining investment boom economy.”

The TTF-MasterCard Tourism Industry Sentiment Survey has found a strong appetite for reform among industry, with near unani-mous support for a review of penalty rates to recognise the 24/7 nature of tourism operations and continuing concern over the impact of tourism taxes and charges.

“We are keen to work with government to further improve the competitiveness of Australia’s tourism sector,” Morrison said.

“Almost a third of tourism opera-tors ranked taxes and charges among their top three business impediments for the last five quarters …

“There is a real opportunity for Australia to capitalise on the potential of the Asian century by better aligning our foreign affairs, trade and tourism strategies but we need the policies in place to do that.”