Pushing tourists out in to regional areas and convincing Australians to take more holidays at home will continue to be two of the key marketing challenges for Tourism Australia, according to Federal Tourism Minister Fran Bailey.
A new report released today showed that last year domestic and international tourists spent $63.7bn in Australia with less than half, $30.6bn, being spent in regional Australia.
The Tourism Research Australian report revealed that international visitors account for just $12.6bn of the total spend while domestic travellers accounted for $51.1bn.
But while international tourism between 1999 and 2004 increased at an annual average rate of 6.3% domestic tourism has been flat.
Fran Bailey said report highlighted the need for Tourism Australia to focus on growing both “yield and dispersal”.
“Tourism Australia’s marketing activities are therefore aimed at increasing total and average length of stay and to grow dispersal and regional visitor spend by encouraging visitors to travel outside the major gateways,” Bailey said.
“We want more travellers who like to get off the beaten path and travel beyond the gateways.”
Good news for the domestic industry was that Australians who do travel in their country are spending more with overnight domestic spend increasing by 3.5%. While in 1999 the expenditure on an overnight trip was $33.6bn in 2004 it was $40bn.
The report found Australians are more likely to spend their money in regional Australia with 54% of domestic visitors expenditure outside of the capital cities and Gold Coast tourism area.
Meanwhile the majority of international visitors budget (78%) is spent in those areas.
New South Wales was the biggest money spinner for tourism in 2004 ($19.6bn), followed by Queensland ($16.9bn), Victoria ($12.6bn), WA ($6.1bn), South Australia ($4bn), Tasmania ($2bn), Northern Territory ($1.5bn) and ACT ($$1.1bn).
The top five tourism areas in terms of domestic visitor expenditure were Sydney, Melbourne, the Gold Coast, Brisbane and Perth. For international visitors expenditure it was Sydney, Melbourne, Tropical North Queensland, Perth and the Gold Coast.
