Yesterday about 100 of the Australian Backpacking Industries most influential business owners and managers gathered in The Darwin Convention Centre to hear about all things influencing the industry. In contrast to my post yesterday overall the vibe was extremely positive with everyone feeling that the industry was in good shape and as yet not feeling the effects of the economic downturn. Myself, Katrina Greeves from World Nomads and Brett Claxton from Calypso and Njoy Backpackers in Cairns were all live Twittering and the closing session involved myself and Nigel Hobbs from Fuel Creative in Cairns discussing the merits of blogging and social media marketing for the tourism industry.

Two main themes that came out of the day were firstly the strength of the Australian backpacking industry and secondly the importance of the Working Holiday Visa. I will talk about the work market in a separate post.

Maree Tetlow the CEO of Tourism Northern Territory kicked off precedings by explaining the importance of backpackers to the Northern Territory industry. Maree reported that international backpackers spend more than twice “other” travellers in NT; 92,000 backpackers contributed $54million in 2008 with an average stay of 8 days. Peter Burke the Backpacker Tourism Advisory Panel Chairman summed up everyones enthusiasm when he said the backpacking industry was “resilient” and “booming”.

We were treated to a fabulous presentation by David Jones – Director General of the World Youth Student and Educational Travel Confederation (WYSTEC). David is one of those genuinely nice guys and he has such an infectious passion for youth travel. He praised the Australian industry for being the most organised and best in class. David discussed a lot about how the travellers think and travel patterns over the last few years. One thing that stuck out for me is that a backpackers daily carbon footprint is just 9% of a business travellers and likewise a backpacker spends on average 53 days in a destination as opposed to 3.3 for the business traveller – meaning much less flights.

David dispelled any illusion that backpackers are “budget” saying that the average spend per trip was $4,500. He also said that the +35 age group was growing as were the number of hostel with private facilities. Although Brad Holland, Executive Director of International Exchange Programmes (IEP), regaled a great anecdote in which 5 free drinks were enough to swing one backpackers purchase decision on which hostels to stay totalling nearly $4,000 worth of business.

We received lots of information from new website What Travellers Think – in particular the most endearing one being that 92% of travellers that have been to Australia would recommend it as the best destination for backpackers.

Another interesting statistic that I picked up from Davids’ presentation was that youth travel accommodation is a USD$7.6 billion industry generating over 300 million bed nights annually. Surely this illustrates there is still plenty of opportunity in online booking of accommodation.

Finally in this section Dawn Howell of Tourism Australia showed some of the campaigns that Tourism Australia were doing and some very recent arrival statistics. Tourism Australia are one of the few national tourism bodies in the world that put real emphasis on the backpacking sector. The Tourism Australia Facebook page has 245,000 fans; while Tourism Australia are targeting influential bloggers bringing them out to Australia. My only thoughts there are that is seems the bloggers they are targeting (the Satorialist amongst them) are not rarely the youth target market.

For those of you looking for my presentation I will get this up over the weekend. The truth of the matter is that while I should by now be at home with the family I am in fact sitting by the pool in the sun still in Darwin. Yup, I missed my flight. I got my time zones mixed up and although this meant I got to stay out until 3 am at the after conference party it meant I was three hours late for my flight. Qantas flights out of Darwin are now full until Saturday – so I am here for two extra days.

Share this Post