Published on : Thursday, July 10, 2014
Strong growth in business travel has fuelled a solid rise in domestic tourism in the March quarter, with expenditure up by $1 million a day, analysis of the latest National Visitor Survey by peak national industry body Tourism & Transport Forum (TTF) shows.
Tourism Research Australia’s National Visitor Survey (NVS) for the March quarter shows overnight trips are up 9 per cent compared to the same period last year, with nights up 5 per cent and spending up 6 per cent. For the year ending March, overnight trips and spending are both up 4 per cent.
TTF Director, Media & Communications Rowan Barker said these are encouraging results.
“Australians spent almost $1 million a day more on domestic travel in the March quarter than they did last year, with business travel accounting for two thirds of the increase,” Mr Barker said.
“Spending by business travellers was 25 per cent higher, with business trips up 26 per cent quarter on quarter, indicating growing confidence in this high-yielding segment.
“Although holiday nights were down 3 per cent for the quarter, spending rose by 2 per cent, while visiting friends and relatives travel grew solidly, with nights up 12 per cent and spending up 5 per cent.
“With domestic travel making up almost 70 per cent of the Australian tourism industry, good domestic performance is critical to the nation’s visitor economy, the 283,000 tourism businesses around the country and the 900,000 jobs supported by tourism nationwide.
“These figures again underline tourism’s capacity and potential as an economic development strategy for Australia, however further investment is required to help the sector reach its Tourism 2020 goal of doubling overnight visitor expenditure to $140 billion.
“A business as usual approach will not achieve the targets that the state and federal government have all signed up to – we need game changing reforms of visas, aviation capacity, and significant additional investment in tourism infrastructure, marketing and events to fully capitalise on the opportunity for tourism to provide future prosperity for Australia.”
Source:- TTF
Tags: TTF News
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