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April 10th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Savage toll on tourism … the high dollar has also tempted thousands more Australians to take their holidays overseas, instead of travelling domestically.
THE high Australian dollar is taking a savage toll on the nation’s tourism industry, with official figures showing foreign visitors’ spending has slumped to its lowest level in more than four years.
Income from foreign tourists is estimated to have fallen to $2.63 billion in February, its lowest monthly level since December 2007, the Bureau of Statistics said.
Foreign visitors now spend about $100 million less a month on tourism-linked services such as flights or hotels than they did a year ago, the bureau said in trade figures published last week. In a double whammy for the industry, the high dollar has also tempted thousands more Australians to take their holidays overseas, instead of travelling domestically.
Australians are estimated to have spent $2.82 billion on overseas tourism services in February, the highest amount on record.
The managing director of the Australian Tourist Export Council, Felicia Mariani, said the high dollar was just one of many challenges; tourism was also being harmed by foreign governments’ taxes on long-haul flights.
Britain this month raised its tax on long-haul flights, and there are growing fears that cash-strapped European nations could introduce similar levies.
”It’s an expensive destination, and now there is a tax being applied to long-haul travel departing from the UK,” Ms Mariani said. ”We have to be concerned that other European countries may well pick that up.”
With Australia’s relatively high wages also raising hotel running costs here, Ms Mariani said the industry needed to have a ”good hard look” at ensuring it was offering foreign visitors value for their money.
Spending on tourism is notoriously difficult to measure, and the ABS says its figures are a timely guide to the industry’s health rather than a perfect measure of tourism spending.
But the number of people arriving here confirms the industry’s woes, with short-term arrivals falling by 0.2 per cent in the year to February, while the number of Australians heading overseas jumped 9.1 per cent.
Despite these challenges, there are also some bright spots for the industry.
The chief executive of Wotif.com, Robbie Cooke, said there had been strong growth across Asia, and some parts of the domestic industry.
“In terms of inbound tourism we’ve seen some strong growth coming from Asia, with a nearly 20 per cent increase in visitors from Malaysia to Australia in the past couple of months and this has been increasing steadily,” Mr Cooke said.
“On the domestic front places like Cairns, Sydney, Gold Coast, Melbourne and the NSW North Coast have seen good growth in leisure bookings.”
The industry is also benefiting from a surge in Chinese visitors.
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