Tourism Investment in Australia

Abstract

Tourism is an important contributor to the Australian economy. The tourism sector's ability to continue its role in the national economy depends on the provision of investment funds necessary to create and maintain tourism businesses and tourism-related infrastructure. Based on national accounts data, the present study analyses tourism investment performance in Australia over the last 13 years. It reveals that the tourism sector experienced a lower rate of return than the rest of the economy during this period in spite of the fact that the tourism investment rate was consistently higher. It also reveals that, within the broad tourism sector, there is substantial variation in investment performance and profitability. Caution must be exercised in interpreting these findings, as there are substantial gaps and limitations, in both the definition and the measurement of tourism investment and related variables. Future work in this area should focus on closely specifying requirements for a properly defined and sufficiently disaggregated dataset on tourism investment and related variables.