Industry Woes No Tourists No Indian Students

[connaust]

The holiday is over. Tourism in Australia is flagging but the industry has grand plans for a revival, writes Clive Dorman. Australian tourism has hit rock-bottom. Like an addict looking for a road to recovery, the industry finally conceded last week there is a problem.


The State of the Industry report by the federal government's Tourism Research Australia agency, which was presented at the industry's first Tourism Directions conference in Canberra on November 15, laid out the stark reality that tourism ran into a brick wall a decade ago.


That was roughly when Australia ceased to be the world's ''flavour of the month'', even though consumers around the globe still rate Australia among the top few places they would like to see.


See comments from Australians here.




Indian students ditching Australian education plans.


AUSTRALIA'S multi-billion-dollar Indian student market has collapsed in just 12 months.


This is because new students are turning their backs on the once-prized Australian education sector in favour of Canada, New Zealand and Britain.


Enrolments from the Indian student market -- which until last year was showing annual growth rates of up to 40 per cent and was worth almost $3 billion a year to the Australian economy -- have been dropping since March.


By September, commencements were down almost 50 per cent on last year, due to the combined effect of onerous new financial requirements, last year's street attacks on Indian students, vocational school closures and the rising Australian dollar.

[Cerberus1]

I think one of the major factors crippling tourism is the exchange rate. You only have to look at the Ashes. 2006, around 30,000 fans travelled from the UK to Australia to watch the cricket. This time around the number is expected to be around half of that. Exchange rate in Nov 2006 was around £1 = $2.5 AUD, at present it's around £1 = $1.6 AUD.