This was published 14 years ago
Good, but boring: young Australians would rather be somewhere else
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie? No thanks. Domestic tourism is struggling to attract young travellers.Credit: Rebecca Hallas
Clive Dorman reports that travel by Australians on home soil is drying up.
Ask seasoned Australian travellers about the world and many will tell you we have the best country on Earth. Ask Australians under 35 about their country and they'll mumble something like "good but boring; would rather be somewhere else".
That's what industry research indicates.
Travel by Australians within Australia is in a state of decline. Only domestic travel to the Northern Territory has held its own (it's growing by barely 2 per cent a year and slowing). Elsewhere it is static or falling.
In NSW, the trend is alarming for accommodation providers and others who rely on domestic tourism, with holiday visitor nights declining by 12.3 per cent in the past decade.
The trend of the past decade mirrors consumer resistance to ever-increasing fuel prices, which has progressively choked the number of domestic holidays taken by car.
However, when the price of fuel fell dramatically last year after peaking at
$1.70 a litre, the domestic tourism picture didn't suddenly recover.
Australians have been heading for the international exits in record numbers, encouraged by a strong Australian dollar. The trend is for continuing strong growth in international travel, according to the latest research by Tourism Australia's Tourism Forecasting Committee (TFC).
At the start of this decade, up to 3.4 million Australians were taking overseas holiday each year. Now the figure has reached 5.8 million.
The global financial crisis has temporarily stopped the trend but by 2018 the forecast is that 8 million Australians a year will head overseas.
"The current cost of outbound trips to many destinations remains near historical lows," the TFC says in its latest analysis. "Further, while Australia's economic prospects are weak in the short term, the outlook remains more positive than for most Western economies.
"Overseas tourism operators and national tourism offices are therefore expected to intensify their marketing to Australians."
The downside is domestic tourism is "facing a long, steady decline", the tourism industry newspaper Travel Today reported last month, quoting data from Roy Morgan Research.
"Looking forward, it doesn't look good," said Morgan's director of tourism, travel and leisure, Jane Ianniello, at a trade seminar. "The industry will have to work harder and smarter. Despite low consumer confidence, people are refusing to drop their holiday plans. The bad news for domestic operators is that people are going overseas."
A survey by Morgan of 20,000 Australians found the number of people intending to stay in Australia for their next break fell from 61 per cent to 57 per cent.
According to Ianniello, consumers increasingly regard themselves as "attracted to new ideas" while fewer describe themselves as "cautious", further fuelling a desire to travel overseas to seek new experiences.
Under-35s, in particular, are becoming hard to attract, Ianniello said.
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