Guest workers are now needed in Australia to aid an ailing tourism industry. There are not enough incoming tourists and there is beginning to be a lack of people to cater for the ones who do come.
On the surface, Australia may seem the perfect place for foreign tourists to visit: great weather, a variety of sports in the sun, great cities, a language understood by people all over the globe and the feeling of being in an exotic land with first-world comforts.
However, the reality is quite different at the moment as more Australians have started focusing their attentions on escaping their homeland to go on holiday and less people have been visiting down under. Around 800,000 Australians left the country in September this year, to be replaced by a mere 432,000 tourists.
The reasons for these figures have been put down to the buoyant Australian currency, a lack of sufficient marketing and campaigning and low levels of service. It is worth remembering that not every tourist in the world has sufficient funds to fly to Australia, especially during a period of economic turmoil.
These elements have led to a lack of foreign investment, which in turn has led to a shortage of labor. It has been estimated that Australia needs around 35,000 more workers to cover the current gaps in its tourism sector. With Australians being too expensive and often unwilling to do menial jobs in hotels, there is only one solution: to import workers. The government has thus started thinking about making special visa arrangements to accommodate immigrant workers.