Buckley: Youth market will be our saviour
The youth travel market is more likely to be a ‘recession buster’ than the baby boomer segment, according to Tourism Australia Managing Director Geoff Buckley.
Speaking at the Baby Boomer Tourism Summit in Sydney this morning, Buckley said while 45 to 65-year-olds represent 25 per cent of leisure travellers in Australia, theirs is the generation most impacted by the recession, making them less likely to travel in the coming years. By contrast, he said the youth market was “holding up a large chunk of inbound, and we’re seeing them travel right around our country”.
According to International Visitor Survey statistics, in 1998 nine per cent of international arrivals were young travellers compared to 34 per cent baby boomers. By 2008, the youth segment had grown to 23 per cent while baby boomers had fallen to 30 per cent.
In brighter news for conference delegates, Buckley added figures for the domestic marker revealed the opposite trend, with the youth market declining from 19 per cent in 2000 to 15 per cent in 2008 and baby boomer numbers increasing from 30 per cent to 35 per cent in the same period.
He said Tourism Australia’s strategy was to focus on ‘experience seekers’ who stay longer, spend and disperse more and that these tourists are equally represented in the baby boomer, youth and family markets.
“It’s not as simple as the size of demographics, it’s also about their motivation. Experience seekers are the biggest recession busters, of which baby boomers are a subsection.”
Buckley’s message was reinforced by Dr Siobhan O’Dwyer from the Productive Ageing Centre, who said baby boomers hit hard by the global financial crisis are being forced to work beyond their planned retirement age to top up their super funds.
She said the value of funds for 55 to 64-year-olds had fallen by 19.7 per cent in 2008, making past predictions about their future spending patterns redundant.
By Martin Lane · May 25th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Comments
25 May 09
1:50 pm
Typical. Gen Y comes up smelling of roses as usual
27 May 09
11:14 am
It does not look that positive for travel industry in general though when you consider this article against your earlier one: http://thumbrella.com.au/uk-st.....dbath-1379 saying that the youth market might also experience problems later this year.
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