Where Aussies want to holiday?

BY BRIAN CRISP
IT SEEMS our love affair with Bali is showing no signs of waning.

The list of the top international destination searches on TripAdvisor.com.au shows that Indonesia makes up 30 per cent of the list. Indonesia is consistently the No.2 overseas destination for people leaving Australia on holidays. New Zealand is always No.1. So it is surprising then that only one NZ destination – Queenstown at No.17 – made the list.

Domestically, 60 per cent of the most-searched destinations were in Queensland, which is good news because historically when tourism booms in Queensland, it is good for the rest of the country.

Here’s the top 10 international and domestic searches:

International
1. Seminyak, Indonesia
2. New York City, US
3. Paris, France
4. Singapore
5. London, UK
6. Honolulu, US
7. Kuta, Indonesia
8. Bangkok, Thailand
9. Ubud, Indonesia
10. Patong, Thailand

Domestic
1. Melbourne
2. Sydney
3. Brisbane
4. Surfers Paradise
5. Cairns
6. Port Douglas
7. Perth
8. Adelaide
9. Airlie Beach
10. Noosa

IT COST $122.65 to travel 47.4km in a taxi from my home to the airport last week. It took 39 minutes.

Had I driven, and parked undercover for the five days I was away, it would have cost $105 plus petrol.

There’s nothing too unusual about that. Except when you consider I paid only $69 to fly 830.3km between cities.

What a bizarre world we live in where it costs $2.58 a kilometre to travel by car and 8c a kilometre to travel by plane.

THE other thing Australians can’t seem to get enough of is cruise ships. According to Cruise Down Under, the industry continues to out-perform other tourism sectors, with growth increasing by 30 per cent year on year.

There’s been an increase in cruise ship visits to Australian ports during 2011-12 from 573 to 736; an increase in passenger expenditure from $303 million to $443 million; an increase in total crew expenditure from $43 million to $60 million; and an increase in total port-related expenditure from $440 million to $733 million.

ZIMBABWE is again pressing its tourism credentials. Smart Traveller had the African nation listed as “reconsider your need to travel” for some time but recently altered that to a level two warning, which brings Zimbabwe in line with a lot of other African nations where visitors are urged to exercise a high degree of caution.

It was a shame then to read that the government has allowed large-scale mining in the Unesco-listed Mana Pools National Park one of Zimbabwe’s main tourist attractions.

Brian Crisp is News Limited’s national travel editor.

(The Australian)