Australian tourism should prepare for a bumpy ride

A report in the Herald Sun says that Australia’s tourism industry should prepare for a bumpy ride, with everything seems to be conspiring against domestic and foreign tourists holidaying in Australia.

While there’s a whole lot of excitement about increased competition and budget airlines flogging cheap-as-chips flights, behind the hype there is an industry facing trouble.

Australia is becoming an expensive and therefore unattractive holiday destination.

Even Australians don’t want to take their breaks here, for no other reason than that it’s cheaper to head overseas.

Figures for 2005 and 2006 show the growth in numbers of Australians heading overseas far exceeded the growth in inbound tourism.

Meanwhile, countries such as New Zealand are crowing that throughout May and June of this year, the number of Australians heading there grew at its highest ever rate.

And why wouldn’t they? Just look at our rising cost of living.

Accommodation, dining and local transport are becoming prohibitively expensive.

I’ve just booked a holiday house at Wilsons Promontory for next summer.

If I’d had my ‘druthers I’d have been booking our usual foreign sojourn, but our wings have been clipped this year for family reasons.

The truth is our regular overseas jaunts make budgetary sense.

Apart from loving exotica and the shock of the old, we get far better bang for our holiday buck in other countries.

Popular opinion has it that travelling abroad is prohibitively expensive, but that’s no longer true when compared with a bit of R-and-R in Australia.

A week at the Prom can also buy you a week’s rental of a ritzy apartment in Venice, for example — a city renowned for being expensive.

On top of accommodation you need to consider everyday costs.

It’s true that Italy used to be mega-expensive, but compared with home it’s no longer the case.

Down the main drag of my local suburb you pay $20 for a run-of-the-mill pasta dish that cost $8 just a few years ago.

For the same price you can get the most exquisite squid-ink risotto in Venice, tip and hand-kissing included.

As for buying fresh produce, we like to think we boast the best on offer, but Italy has it all over us.

You can buy a day’s supply of the most succulent berries, the choicest quail and rabbit sausages, the finest blood-orange juice for the same cost as a limp cabbage here.

There are a zillion places overseas that provide better value for Australians than holidaying at home.

I’ve had very nice holidays in Darwin, Surfers Paradise and Broome, but I’ve had better, longer and cheaper ones in India, Mexico, China, Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, Italy and even the US.

Why, I ask you, would any sane person pay through their nose to spend a week being vomited on by hoons in Rosebud or Lorne, when for the same price they can be treated as a valued guest in Mexico?

For around 50 bucks a night in Mexico you can luxuriate at a great beachside hotel, languish on a pristine beach and be smilingly fed seafood tortillas at 20c a pop, while quaffing Corona beers at $1 each.

The problem is not our tourism industry. Operators here know what they’re doing, even if organisations such as Tourism Australia don’t.

The recent and expensive “Where the Bloody Hell Are You?” campaign being a case in point.

Where are they?

Spending their money bloody sensibly, that’s where.

The problem for Australia is our rising cost of living, increasing interest rates and strengthening currency.

Accommodation and food costs are going through the roof, as is our dollar.

What’s to be done?

For a start, we should stop the pretence that our economy is doing brilliantly.

The main thing that is booming is our cost of living.

We’ll know we’re on the road to recovery when hard-working Australians find it more affordable to holiday at home than abroad.

A Report reproduced from The Sun Herald by The Mole