On April 24 the Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) announced that the global recession had led to a sharp increase in the amount of back-packing travellers making their way to Australia.

Although the predictions fore-casted that the number of visitors to Australia would drop by near on 250,000, the Council have said that they are robustly dealing with the issue, and that they are confident the the industry will make a full recovery.

“The industry’s been through SARS, September 11, the collapse of Ansett, and the Bali Bombings, and we have learned and got better at recovery every time,” said a representative.

The government has pumped 8.5 million Australian dollars into a grant to boost and innovate the industry.

But perhaps we need not worry considering that the amount of visa applications to travel to Australia have gone up by 20% from England and Germany.

So things are looking pretty sunny on the otherside of the globe. There is a sparky interest in jet setting over to those sandy shores, and there is a peachy market for home exchanges with Australia over here.

So Australia, welcome to our site! We hope the all the new coming Australian users will take advantage of the impressive and sustained tourism market over there to do exchanges with other parts of the world!