Has the Chinese tourism 'boom' run its course in Cairns?
Is the China boom over for Cairns?
Economist Pete Faulkner has raised the question after crunching the numbers contained in the latest International Visitor Survey.
The yellow trend line on the chart above clearly shows Chinese visitation peaking in late-2016 before a steady decline sets in.
"When we look at the breakdown of the TNQ data we see that Chinese visitors fell by 6% in the year to December 2017," Mr Faulkner said.
"As the chart above makes clear, it is starting to look very much like the “China boom” may have run its course in the Far North.
"Over all, the latest International Visitor Survey is once again bad news for TNQ. Despite visitor numbers to Australia increasing by 6.5% for the year to December, and those to Queensland up a less impressive 4.3%, the number of international visitors coming to the Tropical North has fallen by 0.4% to 897,079."
Mr Faulkner said Queensland more broadly wasn't keeping pace with national growth.
"Regional expenditure by international visitors rose by 8.2% nationally, which saw the average expenditure per visitor not quite keeping pace with inflation at +1.6%. But it was up just 3.7% in Queensland, so average spend per visitor fell by 0.7% in the Sunshine State," he said.
"In TNQ, both total expenditure and spend per visitor fell 0.4%, which equates to a decline of over 2% in real terms. The under performance of TNQ sees our share of the international market fall once again to just 11%.
"When we look at the breakdown of the TNQ data we see that Chinese visitors fell by 6%, US were down 1.6% with Japan and the UK both recording small (0.8%) increases.
"With other core markets besides China struggling to make headway there is surely some concern for an industry which appears unable to fully tap into the continued national surge in international visitor numbers."
TNQ TOURISM NOT KEEPING PACE WITH NATIONAL GROWTH
"Over the past 5 years international visitor numbers to Australia have increased by 45.3% while those to TNQ are up 35.7%; the industry in the Far North has undoubtedly seen significant growth but is under-performing by some 2% per annum on average.
"Had the region kept pace with the national trend we would be looking at an extra 63,000 visitors in the past year.
"Domestic tourism data will be released in a fortnight and considering this is the more important sector for TNQ we shall wait and see if the slight quarter on quarter recovery seen in the September quarter data (see here) has continued. We'll also get a better handle on whether the sector can return to year-on-year growth."
