By 2020 the average Australian will take 10 holidays, of various lengths and destinations, per year; Australian will welcome 8,162,000 visitors to our shores and will farewell 11,222,000 Australians traveling abroad, all adding up to a tourism industry that will be worth $113.8 billion to us in 7 years time (up from $101.8 billion in 2012 / 2013).

This vital sector will welcome increasing visitors into Australia from middle-class China (worth $6.9 billion in 2020) and India (worth $1.9 billion in 2020) as well as continue to be one of the worlds premier tourist destinations, but behind these statistics is a deeper tourism tale of an industry that is restructuring and re-purposing itself to the needs of tomorrow travelers.

120 years ago when cars started to become an everyday item, we grew a local road bound tourism industry. As aviation became accessible to more and more people we added overseas trips to our travel diet, for the young this meant a gap year back to mother England and for the retired the Women’s Weekly coach tour of Europe, now if t means we see the world as our own backyard ripe for to explore.

Tourism has continued to evolve in Australia and in this week’s segment David Dowsett of ABC Wide Bay and I chat about where tourism is headed in the future.

We looked at who’s traveling and where the various forms of travel including cars, trains, planes, space and cars that fly and how we will go about finding and booking tomorrow’s great holidays.

We also explored emerging specialty tourism sectors including medical tourism, ancestry travel, sustainable tourism and others and how to find local people to act as your tour guide taking you on bespoke local tours as seen through the eyes of locals and the technology that will turn us into locals by providing real time insights, information and translations.

As always we end our segment with a look further down the tourism road to see how virtual travel and holodeck like experiences are set to burst onto the holiday market as virtual travel begins to take off in the not too distant future.

Have a listen now and let me know your thoughts of the future on tourism.