Australian tourism's tough days continue due to high dollar and Asian competition

Australia's struggling tourism industry is in for another tough year, with the high Aussie dollar and fierce competition from Asian destinations conspiring to keep tourists away from our overpriced hotels and resorts.

The $96 billion industry is expected to decline by 1.6 per cent in 2012-2013.

It is little wonder that in 2008, for the first time in 22 years, resident departures exceeded visitor arrivals. Since then the gap between the number of Australian departures and international arrivals has continued to grow at an alarming rate - in the 2012 financial year there were 2.1 million more departures than arrivals into Australia, up from 1.5 million the previous year and 70,100 in 2008.