A new Small Scale Accommodation Survey will be developed by Tourism Research Australia (TRA) to fill the research gap on the state and trends of small hotels, motels, and caravan parks across Australia.

The new survey will monitor revenue and occupancy trends for smaller accommodation businesses operating in the tourism industry. It will supplement the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) quarterly survey of tourist accommodation which measures activity in short-term commercial accommodation in Australia with 15 rooms or more.

The Small Scale Accommodation Survey will target approximately 6,000 hotels, motels, serviced apartments and guest houses with five to 14 rooms, and visitor hostels and short-stay caravan parks.

The Minister for Tourism, Martin Ferguson AM MP, said the new survey would be an important tool in filling the data gaps in existing accommodation surveys.

“This survey will be developed to collect essential data about smaller short-term accommodation businesses in an efficient way that reduces the burden on participants,” Minister Ferguson said.

“Governments and businesses will be able to use survey results for policy, planning and investment purposes and the success of the survey will depend on accommodation providers participation in providing data.

“This survey represents another achievement under the Tourism 2020 Strategy with the Commonwealth, State and Territory Government’s working together to contribute to the cost of this new survey.”

STR Global Limited will develop the web-based survey, collecting supply, demand and revenue data that will be published by Tourism Research Australia.

Comparison reports will be provided to respondents as an incentive to participate, indicating how their business is performing relative to other similar accommodation providers.

The first tranche of data is expected to be published in January 2013 and is funded to run for an initial period of two years at a cost of $693,000. The survey may be continued in future years provided that accommodation providers are able to supply the necessary data.

TRA and STR Global will hold information sessions for stakeholders in coming weeks.