New student holiday visa could see tourism and education sectors work together
A new visa to enable students to holiday following their studies in Australia has been presented as a new strategy as part of research on international backpackers in the country.
James Cook University’s foundation professor of tourism, Philip Pearce in his presentation to delegates at the Adventure and Backpacker Industry Conference, said an outcome of the study was to develop a visa where students have three months to travel Australia following their studies.
“What we want to do is design a new after-graduation student holiday maker visa (SHM) for three months to tap into the international student market, it’s quite ridiculous that we send them all home in 30 days after they’ve completed their study,” Pearce said.
Pearce highlighted China and India as markets which have potential for growth in the tourism sector as they are largely represented in education. “These people are at our universities,we teach a large number of people from these source countries and they’re not in the backpacker market,” he said.
Other strategies of the Evolution Of The Backpacker Market And The Potential For Australian Tourism study included: changes to the Working Holiday Maker visa where source countries are expanded and second year visa conditions were lessened, explore backpacker-volunteering opportunities through a summit between backpacker operators and care agencies and industry training courses and workshops on new communication technologies.
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By Alice Terlikowski · November 11th, 2009 at 9:41 am
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