Aussies Face Economic Reality: Staycation - A New Word

From our friends over at Crossman Communications there is a new survey out. They were interested to see how global and local economies are affecting the Great Aussie Summer Vacation which is about to start down under.

And its not a pretty sight. Things are not looking very positive. The mood in the country is not a happy one.

For a summary - read the PR release from the survey results. I was able to get an actual copy of the complete results and compared to other markets in the Asia Pacific region they make for sobering reading.

As a comparison - check out deal site Getflight. Their Australian site (based on Sydney) compared with their Singapore site illustrate just how far your travel dollars will take you. If this doesn't give you travel envy - I don't know what will.

There is a clear lesson here. Those selling travel products have priced themselves out of the market and the Crossman Newspoll provides a dose of reality about how competitive the pricing is in Australia vs the rest of the region.

Tiger and Qantas's woes - in fact the woes of all the airlines in Australia - illustrate the depth and breadth of the problem. With the Australian Dollar at near all time highs the ability of the local population to take advantage of the natural resource powered prosperity boom seems to be very muted. This survey should also give some credence to Alan Joyce's crusade to get lower costs for Qantas mainline brand. The costs have to come down. As the cost of the aircraft are in US dollars (IE relatively lower) - the local controllable costs are the issue for all airlines.

Check out the Aussie Dollar 5 year currency history compared to three other major currencies (Pegged to the US dollar - the Aussie Dollar vs The Euro and the British Pound.


With the Gillard government that is existing on a single vote seat majority in parliament - they should pay attention to keeping their constituents happy. Happiness is a state of mind.

And there is a lesson in this for all of us. (er hmmm US Congress are you paying attention!)

Cheers