Tourism industry warns cap will have billion-dollar annual impact

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The tourism sector has joined the list of groups criticising the government's new cap on international students. The industry says the restriction will have a billion-dollar annual impact.

Transcript

00:00So, the Tourism and Transport Forum have raised some pretty serious concerns about this cap

00:07on international student numbers, which we know are going to be around 270,000 students

00:14per year.

00:15Now, the reason why they're so concerned on that cap is because international students

00:21drive inbound tourism.

00:24They say that any handbrake on international student numbers is not ideal.

00:28And that's for several reasons, including that the benefits that international students

00:34bring to Australia, you know, they're getting out and about, they're exploring Australia,

00:40they're going to the Great Barrier Reef, they're going to Taronga Zoo.

00:44So data from Tourism Research Australia shows that inbound travellers visiting an international

00:49student relative or friend studying in Australia also stay 23 nights on average in 2019.

00:58And that's actually more than double the length of stay compared to the average visitor.

01:04And they spent more than $1.1 billion in total.

01:09But it's not just about the tourism spend.

01:12These international students also fill around 250,000 jobs across Australia.

01:18And many of those jobs are within the tourism sector and the hospitality sector, which we

01:24already know is crying out for workers.

01:26We know that the Queensland government recently launched a major campaign to try and attract

01:32more workers into the industry across the entire sector.

01:36They're looking for waitstaff, hospitality staff, people to work on cruise liners.

01:40So that's what the TTF is concerned about.

01:44Was this cap, though, a better outcome than what the forum had initially expected?

01:49Yes.

01:50So there has been a, I guess, a little bit of a silver lining there or some hope.

01:56Because we know that those eight major universities, they are the ones that are going, in capital

02:00cities, they're the ones that are going to lose the majority of those places, around

02:0422,000.

02:06But the federal government has said that regional universities will be able to accept more students.

02:13So that means places like Cairns in far north Queensland, a major tourist destination, their

02:19campus there, their major campus there is James Cook University.

02:23We know that in Cairns, it is very heavily reliant on the tourism dollar.

02:28It is the town's major employer.

02:33And they are grappling with a worker shortage there.

02:36You've only got to go slightly north to Port Douglas.

02:39We know that restaurants there are limiting the number of hours that their restaurants

02:44are opening because there is a dearth of waitstaff.

02:48So there are concerns around that as well, with job losses, potentially, and the impact

02:55on businesses.

02:56And looking at this more broadly now, has the tourism sector in Australia bounced back

03:01to pre-pandemic levels yet or not?

03:03No, Joe, it's still got a really long way to go.

03:07So it's hard to believe that COVID-19 was more than four years ago now.

03:12And while COVID-19 obviously had a major impact on Australia's economy, I don't think it was

03:20anywhere near as great or as, you know, as great or as impactful immediately as what

03:28it was on the tourism industry when you saw those international borders close up.

03:35So we know that 8.7 million international tourists visited Australia back in 2019.

03:42Last year, that was about 6.6 million.

03:45So we know that we're still around 2 million international visitors down.

03:50The big problem in there, like the biggest chunk, I guess, out of that missing visitor

03:54group is Chinese visitors.

03:57So they made up around 1.3 million visitors to Australia in 2019.

04:03That's now sitting at around 503,000, or it certainly was in 2019.

04:08So Tourism Australia, which is the government's agency that promotes holidays, they say that,

04:17you know, some of the strongest markets since borders reopened is the United States, also

04:22the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

04:25They've said that, look, we know that the recovery of international travel is going

04:30to take quite a significant amount of time, but people are starting to come back.

04:36But it's really interesting, you know, why aren't the international tourists coming back,

04:41Jo?

04:42Why has the recovery been so slow?

04:45And a lot of the experts say that there has been a change of thinking when it comes to

04:50international travel.

04:52So the Europeans, they're not as keen to travel those long distances to get to Australia,

04:59you know, those 24-hour flights to Australia.

05:02You know, Australia isn't the only place that's grappling with the cost of living crisis.

05:07It's across the world, and we know Australia is a very expensive place to get to and can

05:13be to holiday in.

05:14So, look, there's a raft of reasons why we haven't seen that return yet.

05:19We know that Oxford Economics has forecast it could even take up until 2025 to 2026 to

05:26see those tourist numbers return entirely to Australia.

05:31So certainly there's a long way to go.

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