HI5003: Economics for Business Report Writing Assessment Answer

The Daily Telegraph of Australia has published a report on October 16, 2015 by Ann Sherry, on an issue faced by the tourism industry of the country. Sherry wrote that one of the biggest industries of Australia requires big ideas and innovation for further growth and development. She highlighted that as the most important sector in Australia, i.e. the resource sector, is faltering in contributing in the country's growth; the tourism sector has come up as the next best industry. This industry is becoming an economic powerhouse for the next decades to come, with a potential to add almost $250 billion in the economy in the next 20 years. The volume of employment in tourism industry is much higher than in the mining industry. It has been found that in 2013-14, there were 530,000 people employed in tourism in comparison to only 270,000 in the mining. The export volume of tourism has exceeded that of coal. In May 2014, coal earned $16.5 billion from export, while tourism brought about $17 billion. Among the states and territories of Australia, NSW has huge potential for visitor economy, as it supports 90,000 tourism businesses and employs 159,000 direct jobs, contributing $11 billion in the Gross State Product (Sherry, 2015).

Following the scopes for growing tourism activities, the NSW government is keen on utilizing the resources for further development of Sydney. Sydney is already a global city and a popular destination for tourists. However, the government wants to make it a city where people would want to live and visit, easier to navigate, has world class facilities and has vibrancy and energy to attract the people. Sherry proposes that to increase the tourist footfalls in NSW and in whole Australia, the government needs to implement innovative and big ideas, which would make the existing items more attractive. In this context, she has provided the example of High the DBMS TYRUSINESS park The authority has converted the crumbling infrastructure into an innovative popular tourist destination for the locals and international visitors (Schratz, 2013).

Economic analysis of the tourism industry of Australia

The international tourism industry of Australia has grown and developed significantly over the last two decades. In 1992, the number of international tourists to Australia was only 2.5 million to almost 6.7 million in 2014, which is more than double. The composition of the industry has changed too. The markets of Asia, specifically China and India, has gained importance as an international source for visitors. New Zealand is the biggest source of tourists, followed by China (Pc.gov.au, 2015). This increase in tourism results in more stronger ties between the countries. However, there has been decline in the number of tourists from some politically and economically strong countries, such as, USA, UK and Japan. The political and economic conditions between Australia and other countries influence the volume and nature of tourism, like in any other services. The global market share of Australia for international tourism has declined by 0.6% in 2013 due to the fall in the number of tourists from these first world countries (Austrade.gov.au, 2017).