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Tourists flood back but pandemic hangover continues for Qld

Tourists are flooding back into Australia but some worrying trends have emerged in the case of Queensland.

Mar 15, 2023, updated Mar 15, 2023
Tourists are heading back but some of Qld's problems have not been solved (Pic: Tourism Queensland)

Tourists are heading back but some of Qld's problems have not been solved (Pic: Tourism Queensland)

The Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for January showed 412,410 short term arrivals occurred in January, an increase of 351,000 on January last year when Covid restricted travel into the country.

The numbers are still 43 per cent down on January 2019.

Overall arrivals in January were 1.6 million, a monthly increase of 347,460 and included immigration and students and returning residents. The provisional figure for February was 1.3 million.

While international travel remains below pre-pandemic levels, domestic tourism has boomed.

But significantly, the problem of Queensland’s market share has not changed. The state remains well behind Victoria which now has 26 per cent of the market compared with Queensland’s 21 per cent. A decade ago, Queensland was ahead of its southern counterpart.

NSW remains well out in front with 35 per cent.

The ABS also found that tourism jobs increased 12.1 per cent in the December quarter, bringing the total number of jobs back to almost the pre-Covid levels.

That is a remarkable recovery from June 2020 when almost 400,000 jobs were lost, about half the total, after borders were closed.

“By the end of December 2022, we saw 312,500 of these jobs returned to the sector, which is the equivalent to saying nine out of 10 tourism jobs that existed in December 2019 are now filled,” the ABS said.

“Recovery in tourism jobs has not been equal across all industries. Jobs associated with holiday makers have shown the greatest recovery, with cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services just 0.5 per cent off the pre-pandemic level.

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“However, the education and training sector has seen a much slower recovery of jobs lost during the pandemic.”

Only about 40 per cent of education related tourism jobs have been regained.

Men have also done better than women. Jobs held by men have recovered by 92 per cent of 2019 levels whereas for women it was only 86 per cent.

 

 

 

 

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