NZ will no longer be our #1 fan in 2016

Chinese and Hong Kong tourists could become Australia’s top tourist group in less than a year, surpassing New Zealand, if current growth trends continue.

The low Australian dollar, our proximity to Asia and an unquenchable appetite for Aussie products are all fuelling ticket sales Down Under, CommSec says.

A record 953,200 Chinese tourists visited Australian shores in the year to August, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, nudging close to New Zealand’s 1.29 million.

Coupled with the 212,400 travellers from Hong Kong, CommSec economist Savanth Sebastian predicts New Zealand may be bumped from the top spot in mid 2016.

Chinese holiday makers are more economically valuable than their New Zealand counterparts, Sebastian believes, because of their spending habits.

“I think the spending power of Chinese and Hong Kong tourists far exceeds what we see out of New Zealand,” he said.

“We’ve seen ongoing strength in incomes in China, a shift from a low income economy to a middle income economy and that’s probably the key driver, coupled with the fall in currency of the Australian dollar.”

Travel company Extragreen Holidays, which offers Chinese language tours across Australia, says demand is rising.

“Our exchange rate makes it very favourable for them (Chinese tourists) to come,” inbound and outbound manager Sophia Wong told AAP.

“We expect a growth of no less than 5% every year.”

Wong said Chinese visitors want to pack a lot in to their Australian holidays.

“We don’t do shopping trips at all, what we do is day touring around Victoria and some interstate tours, going down to Adelaide for four days or going to NSW and Canberra for four days as well,” she said.

“For the Chinese tourists to be very honest, they just want to be seen. So in terms of our four-day tour, it covers a lot of things along the way, so they would feel like it’s really good value, but in terms of knowing the destination, probably just superficially.”

One of Australia’s busiest airports, Sydney Airport, saw a 6% rise in international traffic in August, with travellers from China up 14.1 per cent and Hong Kong 10.2%.

Tourism is Australia’s third largest export, and now that the resources boom is over it is seen as key driver of economic growth.

“We need other parts of the economy to lift with the pull back in the mining boom,” Sebastian said.

“We are well placed to provide significant services to Asia that comes from tourism and education.”

And as Australia’s largest service export, tourism can’t be ignored as a key contributor to the nation’s potential growth, according to Commonwealth Bank of Australia economist Diana Mousina.

“Queensland will be particularly positively impacted by stronger inbound tourism,” she said.

Tourism Australia MD, John O’Sullivan, said that the latest arrivals figures once again made solid reading.

“There’s plenty of positives to take out of these numbers, notably China and India, where the work our industry has put in during recent years to target the two countries’ burgeoning middle classes is undoubtedly now paying dividends,” he said.

TOP 10 VISITORS TO AUSTRALIAN SHORES IN AUGUST:

New Zealand
China
UK
USA
Singapore
Malaysia
Japan
India
Hong Kong
South Korea

(Source: ABS seasonally adjusted figures)

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