If the bleaching continues on the Great Barrier Reef, tourists say they will pack their bags and go elsewhere, taking with them an estimated $1bn a year and costing 10,000 jobs in regional Queensland, according to a new poll.
The majority of Chinese tourists, and about a third of UK and US tourists, said if severe bleaching continues, and “some of the reef dies completely,” they would be more likely to visit somewhere other than Australia, according to the online polling of more than 4,000 people commissioned by the Australia Institute
If they did visit Australia, 63% of Chinese, 42% of US and 37% of UK tourists said they’d visit somewhere other than the Great Barrier Reef. Similarly, 37% of Australian tourists said the same thing.
Among the international tourists, 63% said they had heard about the bleaching but most still thought the reef was in good shape.
While 53% of Australians thought the reef was in poor or very poor condition, only 14% of Chinese tourists did. Meanwhile, 33% of US and 43% of UK tourists thought the reef was in poor or very poor condition.
If bleaching continued, and the surveys accurately reflected what tourists would do, the Australia Institute calculated it would mean the regions adjacent to the reef would miss out on more than one million tourists a year – almost a third of the total numbers.
This could mean losses of $931m, leading to 10,0000 job losses, the report authors found.
“While there has been lots of talk about the potential tourism impacts of coral bleaching, this is the first time anyone has gone to our key tourism markets and asked them what they might do if we aren’t able to better protect the reef,” said the executive director of the Australia Institute, Ben Oquist.
“The Chinese market is particularly sensitive, with 55% more likely to visit another country. Among Chinese people who travel regularly, this rate is even higher, up to 65%. Chinese tourists are attracted by Australia’s relatively clean environment, so they respond strongly to changes in that perception.”
In 2016, 93% of individual reefs along the Great Barrier Reef experienced bleaching and 22% of the coral died. It was the worst bleaching event in the reef’s history. Scientists found it was virtually impossible without climate change, and the conditions that caused it would be average within 20 years.
The Guardian revealed in May that the Australian government was so concerned about how climate change’s impact the reef could hit tourism that it intervened to have every mention of Australia and the reef scrubbed from a Unesco report.
Similarly, when the government agencies revealed that 22% of the reef had died, they released the figures with a press release that focused on dispelling perceived exaggerations of the damage, and on the ability of coral to recover, rather than on the magnitude of the environmental disaster.
Oquist said the government needed to take serious action on climate change and stop new coalmines if it want to protect the reef.
“Fortunately, the Queensland economy is modern and diverse,” Oquist said. “Four in five people work in service industries, while only 1% work in the coal industry. Policies such as a moratorium on new coalmines can be implemented with a minimal effect on the Queensland economy.”
