An NRMA survey released last week showed high petrol prices were having major impacts on holiday budgets, with families saying they would not travel so far, and spend less while on holidays.

“It was assumed that petrol prices would impact on the tourism industry but nobody expected the traditional Australian family holiday to have changed so much,” said NRMA president Alan Evans.

“With families wanting to cut their travel to reduce petrol costs, tourist destinations further from metropolitan areas could suffer.

“The decision by families to slash their spending by up to $500 and to holiday closer to home means an urgent campaign is needed to boost local tourism.”

Mr Evans said the survey identified challenges for tourism operators in rural and regional NSW, many of whom said they were looking at laying off staff or trying to reduce operating costs.

“If ever we needed a motivation to end the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and transform Australia’s transport energy future once and for all, then this is it,” Mr Evans said.

Tourist numbers throughout rural and regional NSW have plummeted in recent months, and that was reflected in the Shoalhaven where visitation figures for March to June were well down on average.

“They were pretty tough times,” admitted Shoalhaven Tourism manager Tom Phillips.

While much of the blame for tourist numbers falling has been attributed to high petrol prices, Mr Phillips said other factors including high interest rates and low airfares also had an impact.

High interest rates meant people had less disposable income, Mr Phillips said, while low airfares made flying to another city or even country more attractive than a traditional family driving holiday.

“We’ve been hit with the triple whammy at the moment,” he said.

However, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism, and Federal Member for Gilmore Joanna Gash, found a triple whammy of her own impacting on tourism.

“Kevin Rudd’s failure to act on rising petrol prices, $1 billion of new tourism taxes and Rudd Labor’s tourism policy void has been a triple whammy on the tourism industry,” Mrs Gash claimed.

Reports also came out last week saying small tourism businesses had never seen business so bad.

Mrs Gash said the Federal Government had established a tourism strategy committee to develop a long-term vision for Australia’s tourism industry, “But as the data from the NRMA shows, our tourism industry needs a government that has a plan to address the challenges of today.”