Australian tourists shun local destinations

Australians are increasingly shunning domestic holidays in favour of cheaper overseas tours.

The number of Australians planning trips abroad this year has jumped 14.5% and Australian tourism operators in traditional hotspots such as Queensland say they are facing strong competition from offshore holiday packages to places like Bali and Thailand.

“This trend is driven by a desire to experience exotic destinations and of course the growth of low-cost carriers into southeast Asia,” Tourism and Transport Forum managing director Christopher Brown told The Australian Financial Review.

Factors that are contributing to the outbound imbalance include;

• Strong Australian dollar.
• Poor weather in the Queensland tropics.
• Low cost flights overseas.

Recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows in February there were 469,000 short term visitor movements into Australia – down 1.2% from a year earlier. Arrivals from Japan (down 16.6%) and Korea (down 14.4%) dropped sharply, while inflows from China grew the strongest, up 11.4%.

On the other side of the equation, short term resident departures from Australia hit 476,000 movements, an increase of 10.5% on February 2007.