Published: Sep 19, 2022

helping Australian tourism bounce back

Tourism plays a vital role in Australia's economy. At the same time, it is vulnerable to world events, environmental changes and economic fluctuation. Tourism Research Australia, is the leading tourism economics and research body for the Australian Government, that provides research and analysis to support policy and industry development.

During the summer of 2019/2020 bushfires, many Australian tourism regions faced unprecedented damage and disruption, and as a result, tourism was greatly impacted in those regions which were under fire. DSpark was engaged to help Tourism Research Australia understand the actual impact of the bushfires on tourism for these affected regions and to help prioritise the recovery and investment efforts.

Understanding the effect of these factors is key to maintaining stability and growth.

The team analysed the reduction in visitor numbers, by comparing summer 2019/2020 DSpark visitation data to the same period in previous year, for all affected tourism regions. The analysis helped to inform the recovery strategies to get tourism and businesses back on track.

Tourism Research Australia subscribes to our Telco-based mobility data as service APIs to directly access near real time data to analyse for various use cases. The findings provide useful insights on how tourism is affected by crisis events, from bushfires to pandemics, and these findings were presented to the government in parliament to help recovery funding and focus.

"DSpark has provided Tourism Research Australia (TRA) with timely and granular understanding of the population movement of international and domestic visitors, which enables the Australian Government and its agencies to better measure, track, support and grow the $32.4 bullion* tourism industry." - Rod Battye, Manager, Data Innovation and Partnerships, Tourism Research Australia

(*Based on TRA  published 2021-2022 FY data.)

This article was first published on DSpark