Over the past five years, “sharing economy” operations such as Airbnb have cut into the accommodation sector in Australia while Uber has boosted taxi transport – and the number of travel agencies has grown steadily throughout, latest figures show.
The newest report from Tourism Research Australia (TRA), titled ‘Tourism Businesses in Australia, June 2013 to June 2018’, notes that platforms such as Airbnb “allow individuals to provide accommodation services without registering as a business”.
TRA says tourism-related businesses are a substantial part of Australia’s economy, accounting for more than one-in-eight of Australia’s 2.3 million businesses.
The report states that the taxi transport industry reported the largest increase (122%) in business population for the small non-employing business category between 2012–13 and 2017–18.
The reason: “Legislation introduced by individual states and territories from 2015, requiring ride share drivers (e.g. Uber) to register as a business, has resulted in strong population growth within this industry.”
That is the opposite of what “sharing economy” operations have done to accommodation.
The report continues: “The accommodation sector, however, felt the effect at the other end of the spectrum. Despite increased tourism activity, this industry has seen a reduction in business counts over the last five years, likely due to the less regulated sharing economy.
“With platforms such as Airbnb potentially affecting the viability of traditional accommodation businesses, it is possible that the sharing economy is responsible, in some part, for the decrease in business counts. Further, platforms such as Airbnb allow individuals to provide accommodation services without registering as a business, which means these additional services are not included in national business counts.”
Travel agency and tour operator services saw a steady increase over the period with an increase of 2306 smaller operations employing up to 19 people.
Austrade noted: “An increase in this industry is most likely due to the sustained and significant growth in inbound and outbound travel. This particular sector has a more direct association with tourism than most other tourism-related industries. Therefore, its performance most closely reflects the growth in the industry over the past decade.
“Tourism-related business are predominantly small operations. At June 2018, 47% of tourism businesses had no employees at all, while 31% had fewer than five employees. Only 5% of tourism businesses had 20 employees or more.
“However, there has been a continuing shift away from smaller tourism-related businesses towards larger businesses, which partly reflects expansion and consolidation among smaller operators.
“Smaller businesses tend to drive growth in the industry – those with less than five employees have accounted for the majority (99%) of the growth since 2013. Among employing businesses, the rate of growth has been fastest among larger businesses. Those with over 200 workers were up 16% between June 2013 and June 2018.”
The TRA says that at June 2018, Australia had 302,520 tourism-related businesses – 4.6% more than at June 2017 and 11.7% more than at June 2013. With Australia’s tourism industry recording strong GDP growth of 31% between 2012–13 and 2017–18, economic activity has increased in the sector. This has been evidenced by business population increases structural transformation and the emergence of unregulated players in the market. The sharing economy, in particular, has had a significant and growing effect on business counts – in both directions.”
Download full report from Tourism Research Australia site here.
Edited by Peter Needham
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