Proceedings of an International Year of Mountains - Australian Alps ...

Economic Impact Of Visitor Spending
While alpine Parks have economic value to recreational users, they also have value to their host
economies via the generation if jobs and income which would not occur in the absence of the Parks. This
value is termed the economic impact, and is driven by the visitor expenditure which is incurred in the host
economies.
In this study the State is viewed as the host economy, because of the high level of State Government
involvement in the visitor use of the alps. This approach has led us to treat only the expenditure by
visitors to the State as having an economic impact on the State economy. For the present study, input
output models were developed for each of the ACT, NSW, and Victorian State economies by the Centre
for Tourism Research at the University of Canberra. The models provide detailed sector multipliers for
Gross State Product (GSP), which is the state equivalent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and for
employment measured in full time equivalents (FTEs).
The economic impacts on each State/Territory are summarised in Table 5. The size of the impacts on GSP
is a function of how many interstate visitors go to each of the alps destinations, and since 2001 was a low
snow year, these numbers may have been lower than they otherwise might have been. The economic
numbers should therefore be regarded as being towards the lower bound of annual impacts.
Table 5 - Economic Impact of Visitors to the Australian Alps, 2001
GSP $m.
Employment FTE
Namadgi winter na na
Namadgi summer na na
Namadgi Total 29.64 456
NSW winter 95.98 1540
NSW summer 51.67 840
NSW Total 147.65 2370
Victoria winter 102.97 1654
Victoria summer 42.06 675
Victoria Total 145.02 2329
For Namadgi National Park there was insufficient data for a winter/summer breakdown and so annual
results are presented. The ACT economy receives an annual boost to GSP of $29.64 million, of which $2
million represents increased tax revenue going to the ACT Treasury. For NSW the GSP boost is $147.65
million per year, of which $10.3 million is increased tax revenue to NSW Treasury on account of
expenditure by visitors to the NSW alps. For Victoria, the boost to GSP is $145.02 million annually, of
which $10 million is extra State tax revenue.
The seasonality of economic impacts on NSW and Victoria has changed over the past decade, in line with
the growth in summer tourism in each State’s alpine areas. Studies in the early 1990s put the winter effect
at 89 per cent of the total in NSW, and 83 per cent in Victoria. This study estimates the 2001 winter
percentages at 65 per cent and 71 per cent respectively.
Conclusions
This has been an empirical study of the economic values and impacts of tourism in the Australian Alps. It
has estimated the capital value of the alps for recreation using the travel cost method to be likely of the
order of $40 billion, and the annual economic impact at a combined $322.31 million.
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Celebrating Mountains – An International Year of Mountains Conference
Jindabyne, New South Wales, Australia