ABS figures show slow recovery of international visitors to Australia

The return of international visitors has been slower than expected since the reopening of Australia’s international borders with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported that only 231,480 short-term tourists visited in May.

Contrasting with 668,300 short-term visitor arrivals in May 2019, arrival numbers were significantly smaller than the 420,110 Australians who headed overseas during the same period.

With the latest UNWTO World Tourism Barometer predicting that tourism in the USA and Europe is recovering much faster than the Asia Pacific region, the difference in Australia’s figures shows the challenge for the tourism sector as it looks to regain the losses caused by the pandemic.

Time, distance and cost in the post-COVID era of travel have pushed Australia’s tourism industry back 20 years where export tourism businesses are facing cautious consumers looking for minimal risk holidays closer to home.

While international travellers continue to view Australia positively, the reality of converting these intending travellers to Australian visitors is hampered by a complex mix of changeable and expensive air travel, visa application delays, global insecurity and deteriorating economic sentiment, which is impacting confidence to travel in the short term, according to the Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) Managing Director Peter Shelley.

Shelley advises “Australia has always been at the top of the bucket list for many global travellers and our contacts are saying that sentiment hasn’t changed but what has changed is the urgency to travel here

“With so many influences at play, the propensity to travel long distances has been dampened by concerns which lead many travellers venturing closer to home and ATEC members are clearly reporting Europe and the US as their major competitors in the current market.

“Despite a positive uptick in booking pipelines and Australia’s desirability as a destination, the reality is our recovery is going to be much slower than anticipated due to our distance and relative cost from some of our key markets.

“While many suppliers moved quickly and effectively to replace their lost market with domestic travellers during the pandemic, the size and strength of domestic visitation is in no way capable of replacing our high-spending international visitors.”

ATEC’s recent Member ‘Pulse’ survey highlighted a widening gap between slowing domestic tourism business off the back of growing outbound travel, and inadequate inbound visitation to top up a growing shortfall, with nearly 40% of tourism product suppliers revealing their domestic business has already slowed and that inbound is not closing the gap.

Shelley added “at the same time inbound tour operators, who manage and curate itineraries for international visitors, are still operating at around 30% of their pre-covid capacity as they struggle with these global factors along with reduced financial capacity and staff shortages, meaning a full recovery is a long way off.

“While the doors to international visitors are now open, ABS statistics clearly show a stronger return of Australian travellers heading overseas than visitors making their way here and this gap is bound to widen before we see a significant improvement.”

ATEC will attend a Tourism Leaders Roundtable in Canberra this Friday at the invitation of the new Federal Minister for Trade and Tourism Don Farrell, where these and other key industry issues will be raised.