Tourism Australia has just released figures showing that in 2023, the country will welcome 6.6 million foreign tourists . This figure shows that the Australian tourism industry is gradually returning but has not yet recovered to the pre-pandemic period with 8.7 million visitors. Of which, Victoria is the slowest recovery state with the number of visitors still 33% lower than the pre-pandemic period, followed by Queensland with 24% fewer visitors and this figure in New South Wales is 22%.
In terms of foreign visitors to Australia, China remains the market with the sharpest decline from 1.3 million visitors in 2019 to 507,000 visitors in 2023. Although the number of Chinese visitors to Australia in February 2024 increased to 850,000, it is still 7.5% lower than the pre-pandemic period.
Since opening its international borders, Australia has implemented a number of policies to attract foreign tourists. However, these measures do not seem to be enough to increase Australia's attractiveness in the eyes of international visitors.
The first obstacle is the price of food and services, especially the high price of air tickets in Australia, which makes international tourists have to spend a lot of money if they want to travel to this country.
Second, although the world economy is recovering from the pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine and the stagnation of major economies in the world have also caused the travel budgets of families around the world to shrink.
Therefore, economists predict that the Australian tourism industry will need more time to recover and return to pre-pandemic levels, and the expected time to achieve this goal could be in 2025 - 2026.
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