Tourism Australia head Andrew McEvoy has said that despite the rising value of the Aussie dollar, he is confident international arrivals will continue to grow.

“Fortunately for Australia there’s a lot of great airline capacity that’s affordably priced from a lot of our key markets,” he told Travel Today. “We are not seeing that people are being put off.”

These comments seem to be reflected in the international arrivals at Cairns Airport. 29,864 international passengers arrived at Cairns Airport in September, up from 22,961 in 2009.

Mr McEvoy said that the tourism industry will be challenged as tourism product pricing becomes less competitive and airfares rise.

Interestingly, Mr McEvoy noted that Australians paid more attention to economic factors such as currency value and interest rates than most other countries.

“Australians are almost the most financially literate people on earth,” he said. “We understand what our dollar buys. It’s on our news every night, just like interest rates. In other parts of the world it’s not quite the same.

“We are fairly confident we are going to be okay.”

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