The tourism sector has joined the list of groups criticising the government's new cap on international students. The industry says the restriction will have a billion-dollar annual impact.
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00:00So, the Tourism and Transport Forum have raised some pretty serious concerns about this cap
00:07on international student numbers, which we know are going to be around 270,000 students
00:14per year.
00:15Now, the reason why they're so concerned on that cap is because international students
00:21drive inbound tourism.
00:24They say that any handbrake on international student numbers is not ideal.
00:28And that's for several reasons, including that the benefits that international students
00:34bring to Australia, you know, they're getting out and about, they're exploring Australia,
00:40they're going to the Great Barrier Reef, they're going to Taronga Zoo.
00:44So data from Tourism Research Australia shows that inbound travellers visiting an international
00:49student relative or friend studying in Australia also stay 23 nights on average in 2019.
00:58And that's actually more than double the length of stay compared to the average visitor.
01:04And they spent more than $1.1 billion in total.
01:09But it's not just about the tourism spend.
01:12These international students also fill around 250,000 jobs across Australia.
01:18And many of those jobs are within the tourism sector and the hospitality sector, which we
01:24already know is crying out for workers.
01:26We know that the Queensland government recently launched a major campaign to try and attract
01:32more workers into the industry across the entire sector.
01:36They're looking for waitstaff, hospitality staff, people to work on cruise liners.
01:40So that's what the TTF is concerned about.
01:44Was this cap, though, a better outcome than what the forum had initially expected?
01:49Yes.
01:50So there has been a, I guess, a little bit of a silver lining there or some hope.
01:56Because we know that those eight major universities, they are the ones that are going, in capital
02:00cities, they're the ones that are going to lose the majority of those places, around
02:0422,000.
02:06But the federal government has said that regional universities will be able to accept more students.
02:13So that means places like Cairns in far north Queensland, a major tourist destination, their
02:19campus there, their major campus there is James Cook University.
02:23We know that in Cairns, it is very heavily reliant on the tourism dollar.
02:28It is the town's major employer.
02:33And they are grappling with a worker shortage there.
02:36You've only got to go slightly north to Port Douglas.
02:39We know that restaurants there are limiting the number of hours that their restaurants
02:44are opening because there is a dearth of waitstaff.
02:48So there are concerns around that as well, with job losses, potentially, and the impact
02:55on businesses.
02:56And looking at this more broadly now, has the tourism sector in Australia bounced back
03:01to pre-pandemic levels yet or not?
03:03No, Joe, it's still got a really long way to go.
03:07So it's hard to believe that COVID-19 was more than four years ago now.
03:12And while COVID-19 obviously had a major impact on Australia's economy, I don't think it was
03:20anywhere near as great or as, you know, as great or as impactful immediately as what
03:28it was on the tourism industry when you saw those international borders close up.
03:35So we know that 8.7 million international tourists visited Australia back in 2019.
03:42Last year, that was about 6.6 million.
03:45So we know that we're still around 2 million international visitors down.
03:50The big problem in there, like the biggest chunk, I guess, out of that missing visitor
03:54group is Chinese visitors.
03:57So they made up around 1.3 million visitors to Australia in 2019.
04:03That's now sitting at around 503,000, or it certainly was in 2019.
04:08So Tourism Australia, which is the government's agency that promotes holidays, they say that,
04:17you know, some of the strongest markets since borders reopened is the United States, also
04:22the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
04:25They've said that, look, we know that the recovery of international travel is going
04:30to take quite a significant amount of time, but people are starting to come back.
04:36But it's really interesting, you know, why aren't the international tourists coming back,
04:41Jo?
04:42Why has the recovery been so slow?
04:45And a lot of the experts say that there has been a change of thinking when it comes to
04:50international travel.
04:52So the Europeans, they're not as keen to travel those long distances to get to Australia,
04:59you know, those 24-hour flights to Australia.
05:02You know, Australia isn't the only place that's grappling with the cost of living crisis.
05:07It's across the world, and we know Australia is a very expensive place to get to and can
05:13be to holiday in.
05:14So, look, there's a raft of reasons why we haven't seen that return yet.
05:19We know that Oxford Economics has forecast it could even take up until 2025 to 2026 to
05:26see those tourist numbers return entirely to Australia.
05:31So certainly there's a long way to go.