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Australian tourist numbers down | NEWS.com.au or
While industry spokespersons won't say or admit it, the cozy price fixing of US flights/ traffic, and exorbiant taxes/ fees at Sydney is costing 10,000's of jobs. The simple fix is to open up competition.
Australian tourist numbers down
By Melissa Ketchell February 07, 2008 07:42am
INBOUND tourism to Australia is lagging behind the rest of the world, with visitor numbers increasing just 2 per cent compared with a global average of 6 per cent growth last year.
Australian Tourism Export Council managing director Matthew Hingerty said it would take massive innovation to drag the sector out of the doldrums.
"We need to understand why our competitors are booming and racing ahead, and we need to see what lessons we can learn and apply to the Australian market," Mr Hingerty said.
A high Australian dollar and concern from some international travellers about the environmental impact of long-haul travel were among the hurdles to stronger growth.
Tourism and Transport Forum Australia managing director Christopher Brown said the industry had to move quickly to change consumer perceptions of long-haul travel in the face of climate change.
Mr Brown said the industry also needed a long-term approach to labour and skills shortages.
He said the growth figures revealed in Australian Bureau of Statistics data released yesterday were lower than expected.
In a weakened global economy, maintaining competitiveness in the tourism industry was vital, as it accounted for $22 billion in export earnings each year, he said.
"It is a tough operating environment for Australia and we can not become complacent," Mr Brown said.
Mr Hingerty said Australia's ability to compete on price was being eroded and new products and services were needed to encourage more overseas visitors.
The 2 per cent increase for the calendar year meant 5.6 million international visitors come to Australia.
Japan's international visitor numbers grew 14 per cent and the US and China 10 per cent.
There were some bright spots for Australia, with arrivals from China and India growing strongly. Chinese visitor numbers increased 16 per cent and Indian visitors 13.6 per cent.
Mr Brown said more planes and hotels, and a bigger workforce would be needed to maintain these growth rates.
"We also have to invest in compelling new tourism experiences and market them strongly," he said.
I also don't think Sydney Airport would be the main reason why tourist numbers are down (in any case there are other airports they can fly into if they don't like Sydney Airport anyway). I do not think people tend to choose a country to visit based on an airport - and most travellers from overseas wouldn't even know that a curfew exists in Sydney!
I bet many of those that complain about the noise would happily fly out of Sydney airport for their holiday and complain about the delay if THEIR flight got delayed 12 hours and they were stuck in the airport terminal somewhere due to Sydney curfew...
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