Flinders Ranges and Outback Integrated Strategic Tourism Plan

Final Plan
Introduction and Purpose of this Plan
1.4 Barriers to Capitalising on that Appeal
Most of these barriers are not unique to the Flinders Ranges and Outback South
Australia; they are being experienced by regions across Australia.
Travel behaviour is influenced by many factors, but most significantly by
economic health in the place visitors come from and by the general
consumption patterns of those people.
Significant factors that are currently having an impact on domestic holiday
travel include:
• Higher levels of personal and household debt (particularly given recent
interest rate rises).
• Changing household consumption patterns (increases in spending on
communications, household goods, home entertainment systems,
furnishing, renovations and health).
• Increased overall costs of domestic travel (excluding airfares to capital
cities) reducing affordability and competitiveness (particularly because of
steep increases in fuel prices).
• Australians travelling overseas more (particularly from Sydney and
Melbourne). This is due in part to better exchange rates and increases in
seat capacity and holiday deals to New Zealand and South East Asia.
• Changes in the labour market making travel more difficult (increasing
casualisation of the workforce, long working hours and people not taking
their holiday leave).
Basically people have less time and money to spend on travel and prefer to
spend it on making their home environment convenient, comfortable and
entertaining (this trend has been dubbed ‘cocooning’ by futurists).
At the same time, with cheaper overseas airfares along with the rising value of
the Australian dollar, there has been strong growth in the more exotic
outbound travel. Outbound departures are forecast to grow at an average
annual rate of 5.2% to 2016 to reach a total of 8.22 million.
In addition, regions, other than the Queensland holiday destinations, have
been hit by an increase in low cost air carriers focussed on capital cities and
the Queensland holiday regions, much higher fuel prices and a lack of the
standard of accommodation which is being sought by discerning travellers.
Lack of time (the Australian working population has 88 million days of holiday
leave accrued), affordability, other consumer priorities and the industry’s lack
of competitiveness are major issues confronting all destinations. Changes to
Urban & Regional Planning Solutions
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