Tourism Planning After Brexit: Impact on Australian Tourism

This report discusses the impact of Brexit on Australian tourism and presents a sustainable plan to overcome the issues. It also covers the importance of tourism planning involving government, businesses, and other stakeholders.

Running Head: TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT
Tourism planning
August 18
2018
Impact of Brexit on
Australian tourism

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 1
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Tourism in Australia..................................................................................................................3
BREXIT.....................................................................................................................................3
Impact of Brexit on Australian tourism.....................................................................................4
Issues in Australian tourism.......................................................................................................5
More from less.......................................................................................................................6
Going, going…. Gone............................................................................................................6
Forever young........................................................................................................................7
Virtually here.........................................................................................................................7
Alternative plan to overcome the issue......................................................................................7
Tourism planning...................................................................................................................8
Government........................................................................................................................8
Businesses..........................................................................................................................9
Other stakeholders..............................................................................................................9
Feasibility of the plan.................................................................................................................9
The process of the plan............................................................................................................10
Conclusion................................................................................................................................12
References................................................................................................................................13

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 2
Introduction
With the help of development of the world infrastructure, people are getting access to every
corner of the world. Easy access is encouraging the tourism industry, as people can travel to a
number of places in less time (Edgell Sr, 2015). The increasing significance of tourism has
the potential to contribute significantly to the growth of an economy and environment
conservation of a nation (De Grosbois, 2016). In developing countries, the economic and
environmental conservation have been regarded as the driving force for tourism (Hingtgen,
et. al, 2015). As per the United Nations Development Programme, tourism has been
identified as a powerful engine that accelerates the safeguarding of bio-diversity, leads to
socio-economic development, and promotes cultural heritage of developing countries
(UNDP, 2011). It is observed that tourism has been regarded as a means of achieving the
sustainable development goals by many development organizations, like the Department of
International Development, World Bank, United Nations World Tourism Organization, and
the Asian Development Bank. With an annual growth of 7.4%, tourism has been considered
as the most significant phenomena for the socio-economic development of nations of the 20th
century (Asker, et al. 2011).
Economic changes of one nation may sometimes affect the tourism industry of another
nation. For instance, the economic crisis of the UK, popularly known as Brexit, affected the
Australian tourism as well. In 2016, UK had decided to withdraw its membership from the
European Union. The move was later defined as the British Exit (Brexit). This decision has
made the country's economy to fall at to lowest ever stage. Such economic crisis may affect
various industries in the other nations too, including the tourism industry. Australian tourism
has also been affected with this huge economic crisis of UK. This report describes the impact
of the exit of Britain from the European Union in 2016 on the Australian Tourism industry. In

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 3
addition to the above, the report presents a sustainable plan to overcome issues created by
such events.
Tourism in Australia
The Tourism industry plays an important role in the development of the country's economy
(Dredge & Jamal, 2015). In the year 2016, the Australian tourism industry had made a total
contribution of AUD 183.2 billion. This accounted for 10.9% of the total GDP of the country.
In terms of the industry, the tourism sector had employed around 890,000 people directly or
indirectly in the year 2015-16 (Tourism Australia, 2018). As per the latest statistics, the
tourism industry of Australia comprises around 279,000 businesses across different sectors
such as accommodation, restaurants, takeaway services, transportation and retail trade.
In the year 2018, Australian tourism industry has welcomed around 9 million visitors until
the ending of the March month. This shows a relative increase of 6.2% from the same data of
the same month of the previous year. The number of visitors in the month of May 2018 was
609,300, showing an increase of 5.2% from that of the previous year data of the same month
(Tourism Australia, 2018).
BREXIT
The term “Brexit” stands for the British Exit. This refers to the decision for the UK to leave
the European Union (EU). The majority of the voters in the UK had supported the decision of
the country to leave the EU in a referendum passed on 23 June 2016. The UK government
had invoked the Article 50 of the European Union Treaty for the same on 29 June 2017. The
European Union (withdrawal) Act, 2018, has fixed the period ending on the 21st January
2019, for the UK government to decide on how to proceed with the scheduled exit on 29
March 2019, at 11 p.m. (UTC). This decision will have a collective impact on the economy of

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 4
various nations, including that of Australia. The decision would have an impact on the
movement of people among the EU nations, because of the cross-border barriers. This will
further affect the tourism industry across the nations of the EU and others. As the tourism
industry is a significant part of the Australian economy, the impact of the Brexit would touch
the Australian economy as well.
Impact of Brexit on Australian tourism
The monumental vote of UK to leave the European Union had an immediate impact on the
financial market of nations across the globe along with that of Australia (Beirman, 2017). The
decision reflected the large shift in the sentiments. As a result, the Australian market
immediately fell by 3.2 %. However, the actual downfall was only of 1 %. The drastic fall
was the result of an incorrect bet that was about the confirmation of the UK’s decision of
leaving the EU (Dickson & Bolongaro, 2017). The Australian Dollar also experienced a
similar impact of the decision with a loss of 4.0 % on the day of the decision itself. In order to
establish healthy relations with the UK, with the motive to regain the trading strength of the
country, the Australian government has been pursuing a separate free trade agreement with
both the EU, as well as the UK (Rumbens, 2016).
Tourism, being the one of the largest, as well as the fastest growing industry of Australia, had
contributed $ 47.5 billion to the total GDP in the year 2014-15. The same accounted for
around 3% of the total GDP. Moreover, the industry had employed around 580,800 people
that was around 5% of total employment. The country had earned $ 30.7 billion in export
business, which accounted for the 9.6% of total export earnings. According to the Australian
government, it is expected that the Brexit would impede the tourism sector of Australia, in
particular.

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 5
Some of the highlights of the UK tourism industry with respect to Australia are as follows.
UK is one of the largest source markets for Australia for short-term visitors. This is depicted
with the help of the following facts. In 2015-16, UK had following statistics.
 The nation had third largest market with 706,200 visitors. The same accounted for
around 9% of the total number of visitors in that period.
 The country had second largest market for visitor nights which was around 10% of
total visitor nights, and
 The second largest market in terms of total trip spend, spending $3.8 billion which
was almost 10% of the total visitor spend in that time.
Issues in Australian tourism
The Tourism industry is relying mostly on two elements namely, the human resource and the
infrastructure of the country. Over the past few years, industry has been the good news sector
for the country’s economy (Asker, et al. 2018). For the future sustainability of tourism
industry in Australia, narrative of the future sustainability has been presented or constructed
from six megatrends that are interlinked. These megatrends are representing a significant
shift in the economic, environmental and social conditions that will be affected in the coming
years (Hajkowicz, Cook & Littleboy, 2012). These megatrends are listed and described as
follows.
More from less
Trends show that the stock or supply of natural resources like minerals, water, energy, and
food resources is getting limited. Australian tourism is mostly known for its beaches. Thus,
the various environmental concerns will significantly affect the industry. Some of the global
issues are affecting the natural resources that are a major source of the tourism industry.

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 6
These sources are depleting at an alarming rate. In this context, many issues are affecting the
tourism industry of the world as well as Australia. Increasing energy demands, increasing
domestic water demands, low energy investments are some of them (World Travel and
Tourism Council, 2018). The resources being depleted at alarming rates are one among the
major issues for the Australian tourism industry. Some other issues for Australian tourism are
increased biofuel production, high and volatile food prices, and increasing carbon emission.
Going, going…. Gone
Unlike the resources that are discussed in the above megatrend, some of the natural resources
do not trade directly in the market. Along with these resources, it is seen that humans have
also disturbed the biodiversity in the last few decades. The elements of bio diversity also have
a significant indirect impact in the industry. Deforestation is making the environment
polluted, and increasing sea level is contracting the beach areas for which Australian tourism
is mostly known. Such elements are becoming major hindrances for Australian tourism on the
lines of the long-term sustainability of the industry.
Forever Young
Youth is the best asset that a nation can possess to achieve the high accelerated development.
Today, the whole world is getting older and likewise is the effect on the people of Australia.
With an efficient utilisation of youth wisdom and their energy, industry can grow
dramatically fast but governments are not using the young energy efficiently. This poor use
of young energy is becoming a major issue for the Australian tourism industry. The industry
is going through a lack of skilled tourism employees. This is making the industry growth
slow.

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 7
Virtually Here
With the digital advancements, the world has turned out to be virtually connected. This
digitalization is connecting the people across the various corners of the world. This
transformation is making is easy to get the best for the job. With this facility, the Australian
tourism industry is seeking skilled people from a different country that is not good for the
long-term sustainability of the industry (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2018). The
government needs to look after the drawbacks that are making this industry less reliable.
Mostly, this virtual world is enhancing the offshoring in the industry that is becoming an
issue for the industry.
Alternative Plan to Overcome the Issue
All the issue discussed above are a major issue that is concerned for the long-term
sustainability of the Australian Tourism Industry. To overcome all such issues industry needs
a plan that involves all the stakeholders of the industry to make it sustainable. All the
stakeholders from government to the tourists are important in sustainable planning for the
industry (Lew 2014).
Tourism Planning
Tourism planning is a dynamic process of a tourism industry’s consideration of people’s
expectation from the tourism. Tourism is associated with the trans-national travel of people,
but sometimes this may refer to the travel to a new location within the same country. Tourism
planning considers all the need that people want while travelling to other nations (Jovicic
2016). This recognition of a nation’s culture and heritage give different advantages to the
country, especially to the developing countries. Tourism planning is basically intended for
local residents and businesses of the country locality as well as tourists. The planning process
of tourism involves different stakeholders like the government, businesses, and local

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 8
residents (Mistilis, Buhalis & Gretzel 2014). These stakeholders play their individual role in
the process of planning for a sustainable tourism.
Government
In tourism planning, the role of local government is considered to be an important aspect.
Government helps the tourism planning involving their policies and political philosophies to
make the planning efficient as well as sustainable. Regardless of the form of organization and
its operations, government is the only authority that must agree on overall strategy and
planning. Whole planning and strategy prepared to have to be presented before the local as
well as national level authorities for the approval. Similar to this World Tourism
Organization (WTO) is leading the member governments and their views on tourism issue.
This organization issues some planning policies for its member governments, which have to
be followed by the individual government. This makes it more essential involve the local and
national governments in preparing a strategic plan.
Businesses
Different businesses are the integrated part of the tourism industry. Some business like
accommodation facilities, restaurants, tourism guides, transportation, and hotels are the
essential elements of the industry. Such businesses have some business policies, which have
to be considered while planning for sustainable tourism. Businesses are one of the major
investors in tourism planning; this makes it essential to consider their requirements in the
planning process (Todd, Leask, & Ensor 2017).
Other stakeholders
Other stakeholders of the tourism industry are institutions that are financing the tourism
projects, tourism employees, professionals, and consultants, trade unions of the industry,
tourism training and education centres, travellers, and local people. All these stakeholders are

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 9
connected to the industry somehow. These stakeholders and their involvements affect the
tourism industry significantly. Therefore, the stakeholders must be considered while planning
for a sustainable tourism strategy.
Feasibility of the Plan
The planning process helps to develop a plan which is used to achieve the objectives and
goals of the planning. But planning is not enough to achieve that will make the tourism
industry sustainable in long terms. An effective implementation of the developed plan is must
to make it worth planning. Therefore, to make an efficient implementation of planning there
must be some policies or plans which ensure the general duties of all the stakeholders in the
industry. In a general context, different stakeholders recognize different sectors that must be
considered in these policies.
Policies and plans in the tourism sector must reflect all the possible condition and constraints,
and opportunities for each and every stakeholder at different levels. Also, if the tourism is a
dominating sector for the nation’s economy, generally for developing countries, these
policies must reflect development priorities and aspirations. For example, air transportation is
one of the major transportation means for tourism industry, and plays an important role in the
tourism development but for developing countries. The Australia government will look for
the national development objectives with the help of civil aviation authority. Along with this,
the government will subsequently negotiate with international aviation authorities of other
nations through bilateral agreements. These policies are developed for two major reasons, i.e.
firstly, to identify and evaluate the scarcity of available resource. Secondly, to allocate these
scarce resources so efficiently that the best can be taken from their effective implementation.
Such initiatives by the stakeholders of the tourism industry are essential to check and prove
the feasibility of their proposed plan before the government authorities.

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 10
The Process of the Plan
The process of the planning is the way of implementation to make the plan more effective
and efficient. In this order, a proper process has to be followed by the management. This
process is a systematic order of the activities to be performed with the sequence, so that with
the minimum efforts most efficient implementation of the plan can be done. For tourism
planning, the planning process can be described with the help of the below-given example.
(Source by Author)
Study preparation is the first step to prepare a development plan for any sector. A thorough
study of facts and figures makes it easy to understand the current scenario of the individual
sector and help in identifying the objectives of planning. After this, the identification of
objectives is important to make a clear vision for the development plan. This vision will
direct the whole planning process in the right direction to fulfil the requirements of the
proposed plan. With the same vision, some surveys must be conducted to collect the figures
Study preperation
Determination of
development
objeccives
Survey and
evaluations
Analysis and
synthesis
policy and plan
formulation Recommendations
Implemetation and
management Review

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 11
for the current scenario along with the requirements of different stakeholders of the particular
sector.
When the survey and evaluation part is completed this data has to be analysed to understand
the major requirements that have to be fulfilled through this development plan. After
complete understanding of vision and requirements to achieve the objectives of the
development plan, policies and plan are formed. Once the plan is formulated
recommendations are invited from different stakeholders to make it more efficient and
feasible for all the stakeholders. Now, this plan needs to be implemented efficiently to make
it effective. Implementation of the plan is very important, as this step determines outcome
efficiency of the plan. When an efficient implementation is done feedbacks are collected from
the users. For the tourism industry these users are the tourists, therefore, stakeholders have to
collect feedback from tourists and review their development plan for essential changes to
make it more efficient.
Conclusion
The above report concludes that tourism industry plays an important role in the economy of
any nation and is considered the most efficient sector for economic growth in developing
countries. Any economic incident affects the tourism also and the same with the economy.
The tourism industry is connected with the economies of other nations as well. Although a
change in an economy will make only a little impact on the economy of another country,
sometimes-big economic crisis in an economy like UK's economic crisis after BREXIT can
make a significant impact on other nation's economy. Every economy of the world including
the Australian economy has experienced little or more impact of this decision of UK leaving
the EU. This economic change has affected the Australian economy as well as its tourism
industry significantly. Also, there are several global and national tourism issues which must

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 12
be mitigated with effective tourism planning. Such tourism planning includes several steps
that have to be followed essentially to make it more efficient.

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 13
References
Asker, S., Boronyak, L., Carrard N., and Paddon, M. (2010). Effective community-based
tourism: a best practice manual. APEC tourism working group. Australia: Sustainable
Tourism Cooperative Research Centre.
Beirman, D. (2017). Australia needs to invest if it wants their tourism boom to continue.
[online]. Available from: https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-to-invest-if-it-wants-
the-tourism-boom-to-continue-71407 [Accessed on 16 August 2018].
De Grosbois, D. (2016). Corporate social responsibility reporting in the cruise tourism
industry: a performance evaluation using a new institutional theory based model. Journal of
Sustainable Tourism, 24(2), pp. 245-269.
Dickson, A. and Bolongaro, K. (2017). UK and Australia discuss how to ease travel
restrictions post Brexit. [online] Available from: https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-and-
australia-discuss-how-to-ease-travel-restrictions-post-brexit/ [Accessed on 16 August 2018].
Dredge, D. and Jamal, T. (2015). Progress in tourism planning and policy: A post-structural
perspective on knowledge production. Tourism Management, 51, pp. 285-297.
Edgell Sr, D. L. (2015). International sustainable tourism policy. Brown J. World Aff., 22, p.
25.
Gössling, S. (2015). New performance indicators for water management in tourism. Tourism
Management, 46, pp. 233-244.
Hajkowicz, S., Cook, H. and Littleboy, A. (2012). Our future world: global megatrends that
will change the way we live. [online] Available from:

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 14
https://publications.csiro.au/rpr/download?pid=csiro:EP126135&dsid=DS2 [Accessed on 16
August 2018].
Hingtgen, N., Kline, C., Fernandes, L. and McGehee, N. G. (2015). Cuba in transition:
Tourism industry perceptions of entrepreneurial change. Tourism Management, 50, pp. 184-
193.
Jovicic, D. (2016). Cultural tourism in the context of relations between mass and alternative
tourism. Current Issues in Tourism, 19(6), pp. 605-612.
Lew, A. A. (2014). Scale, change and resilience in community tourism planning. Tourism
Geographies, 16(1), pp. 14-22.
Mistilis, N., Buhalis, D. and Gretzel, U. (2014). Future eDestination marketing: perspective
of an Australian tourism stakeholder network. Journal of Travel Research, 53(6), pp. 778-
790.
Rumbens, D. (2016). Brexit and the Australian economy [online]. Available from:
http://blog.deloitte.com.au/brexit-australian-economy/?
_ga=2.227110495.376588813.1534414698-249486333.1533643895 [Accessed on 16 August
2018].
Todd, L., Leask, A. and Ensor, J. (2017). Understanding primary stakeholders' multiple roles
in hallmark event tourism management. Tourism Management, 59, pp. 494-509.
Tourism Australia, (2018). Tourism Statistics [online]. Available from:
http://www.tourism.australia.com/en/markets-and-research/tourism-statistics.html [Accessed
on 16 August 2018].

TOURISM PLANNING AFTER BREXIT 15
United Nations Development Programme (2011). Tourism and poverty reduction strategies
in the integrated framework for least developed countries. Discussion paper. [online]
Available from: www.undp.org/poverty [Accessed on 16 August 2018].
Vogt, C., Jordan, E., Grewe, N. and Kruger, L. (2016). Collaborative tourism planning and
subjective well-being in a small island destination. Journal of Destination Marketing &
Management, 5(1), pp. 36-43.
Wan, Y.K.P. and Bramwell, B. (2015). Political economy and the emergence of a hybrid
mode of governance of tourism planning. Tourism Management, 50, pp. 316-327.
World Travel and Tourism Council (2018). Travel and Tourism Economic Impact 2018:
Australia [online] Available from: https://www.wttc.org/-/media/files/reports/economic-
impact-research/countries-2018/australia2018.pdf [Accessed on 16 August 2018].