Tourism industry expects more gloom

TOURISM operators ranging from hotels to airlines expect to lay off thousands of employees, as international visitor numbers slow to a crawl because of the global economic slowdown.

The lay-offs and likely closures in the $90-billion tourism industry are expected to be in areas reliant on foreign tourists such as North Queensland, Kakadu and Alice Springs.

About 63 per cent of tourism operators expect to make at least moderate cuts to their workforce, reports a quarterly survey by the peak industry body, the Tourism and Transport Forum. About 8 per cent of respondents said they expected to make "significant" job cuts.

The report said: "Almost no tourism businesses expected the picture to improve in the first half of 2009 ... businesses don't expect to see an improvement until the fourth quarter." The industry is responsible for 482,000 jobs in Australia, and a further 366,000 indirectly.

The forum's executive director, Olivia Wirth, said the holiday period had not been as bad as expected but the real test would come next month and set the stage for the rest of the year.

"We expect things to go off a cliff in February because it's the end of the school holidays and there are indications the business market is drying up," she said. "We do expect some businesses to go to the wall."