Tourism Research Australia, a branch of Austrade, has released a report on the trends in tourism businesses from June 2014 to 2019.
Some of the key findings include:
- Tourism businesses make up around 13% of Australia’s 2.4 million businesses.
- Many of these provide services to both local communities and tourists.
- 56% of tourism businesses had employees in 2014, but this dropped to 51% in 2019.
- Tourism employment grew 23%, compared to 11% for national employment over the period.
- The sharing economy is continuing to affect business numbers.
- While only 31% of tourism businesses were located in regional areas, they accounted for 44 cents of every visitor dollar spent in Australia in 2018–19.
