The Tourism & Transport Forum (TTF) has attributed the slowdown in tourist spending habits to the current strength of the Australian dollar and a lack of industry investment.

According to figures released in the latest International Visitor Survey, international visitors to Australia increased in the first half of the year but there was a downturn in spending.

“This will challenge the tourism industry’s goal of doubling visitor expenditure by 2020,” said TTF chief executive John Lee.

“The low yield is further proof that investment is needed in product, service and experience.”

International visitor arrivals for the year to June 2012 increased 1.4 percent to 5.5 million.

“It is good news that arrivals grew by 3.8 percent from January to June, but it’s worrying that visitor spend grew four times slower at only 0.8 percent,” Mr Lee said.

However, Mr Lee was quick to recognise positives drawn from respondents’ results.

“There are some encouraging leisure signals contained within the survey, with markets like Taiwan recording strong growth partly as a result of Tourism Australia active marketing.”