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Category: Tourism / Travel and Tourism

WA tourism industry gets much needed boost

Tuesday, 14 Mar 2017 21:02:27 | Tom Wildie

Tourism WA's Gwyn Dolphin says the green shoots for a recovery are there. (ABC News: Eliza Laschon)

Western Australia had the second largest rise in international visitor numbers in the country last year, according to new tourism data.

Figures from Tourism Research Australia, which is part of Austrade, revealed WA received 954,000 international visitors in 2016, an increase of 12.4 per cent on the previous 12 months.

International visitors spent $2.4 billion dollars in WA last year, up six per cent on 2015.

Tourism WA CEO Gwyn Dolphin said while the figures were promising, they needed to be looked at in context.

"We don't want to go overboard too much on these figures because I think the industry has had a tough couple of years where the downward turn in the economic cycle has impacted some of the hotels and businesses," he said.

"But I think this is showing us that the green shoots are there for recovery."

Mr Dolphin said there was opportunity in the tourism sector with increased availability of hotel rooms and the procurement of major events, such as next year's planned international friendly match between Premier League side Chelsea and Perth Glory.

"I think we've got good reason to believe we can grow these numbers year on year," he said.

New South Wales had the largest increase, with 13 per cent more international visitors in 2016 compared with 2015, while the Australian Capital Territory had the biggest rise in spending.

Focus on Asia 'paying off'

The United Kingdom provided the most visitors to WA, with 150,000 people travelling to the West, but the greatest percentage increase was in visitors was from Malaysia and Thailand.

Visitors from Singapore and Korea also increased sharply, with 21 per cent and 28 per cent more visitors respectively.

Mr Dolphin said while the UK remained WA's biggest market, a campaign deliberately targeted at emerging Asian markets was paying off.

"Markets such as Malaysia, Singapore, China — they're the ones we've seen really good rewards for the effort we've put in," he said.

"There's also some other factors with markets like Japan, Korea, which have been quiet for a couple of years, they're starting to pickup slowly.

Market share stalls

While the figures are promising for WA's tourism sector, the state's market share continues to stagnate.

In 2014, Western Australia had 13 per cent of the national market share, but that contracted slightly to 12.5 per cent in 2016.

Mr Dolphin said overall share needed to be viewed in a national context, with some eastern states proving more popular, especially with the Chinese market

"We're working hard to open up increased increased airline connections from markets such as China, Japan, Indonesia and the like," he said.

"We're pretty confident that our market share is going to grow."

Mr Dolphin said the return of leisure travellers who were squeezed out by business travellers during the mining boom showed the trend was heading in the right direction.

The number of people visiting WA for holiday and leisure grew by 23 per cent on 2015, and by more than 14 per cent over the past three years, while international student numbers grew by more than 15 per cent.

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