NO LeAVe, NO LIFe
Overworked Australians not only compromise their own physical and mental wellbeing; they create major financial liability issues for companies (126 million days of stockpiled annual leave as of late 2012) and contribute to an underperforming domestic tourism sector. In response, Tourism Australia, the peak national destination marketing body, introduced the long-term No Leave, No Life campaign (www.
noleavenolife.com) to encourage holiday taking. Aimed mainly at businesses, the campaign provides web- based tools that help the employer to profile typical stockpiler employees (characteristically accounting for one in four employees), understand and address underlying reasons for stockpiling, encourage (rather than force) employees to take accrued leave, and ultimately change corporate culture to make it more leave-friendly. Frequent short breaks are encouraged, not just because of their more positive workplace implications, but also because they are more conducive to domestic than outbound tourism. Executives are encouraged to lead by example. Beeton (2012) contends that this marketing campaign, unusual in its focus on ‘push’ rather than ‘pull’ factors to stimulate domestic tourism in Australia, has a high probability of succeeding if it can change the salient workplace beliefs of stockpilers. Common reasons for not taking leave, for example, include the normative perceptions that it is a sign of weakness, causes more work for others and is inconsistent with the internal work culture. Personal attitudes of stockpilers include the belief that leave is an impediment to moving up the corporate ladder. Also notable are preferences to keep working, a desire to stockpile time for a really big future trip and/or fears of being bored during leave time.
Such attitudes can be challenged by pointing out the correlation between taking leave and higher productivity, allocating leave in between projects or during slower business periods, and removing perceived penalties for being absent from work. It is also recommended that 4 weeks of leave be factored into business-planning processes so that it becomes normative, and that objectives be set based on a 48-week work plan.
being the primary exception. The overall trend of declining fertility is reflected in the size of the average Australian household, which declined from 4.5 persons in 1911 to 2.6 persons in 2006. It is expected to decline further to between 2.4 and 2.5 persons per household by 2031 (ABS 2012a).
One factor that accounts for this trend is the decline in infant mortality rates. As the vast majority of children in a Phase Four society will survive into adulthood, there is no practical need for couples to produce a large number of children to ensure that at least one or two will survive into adulthood to care for their aged parents and carry on the family name. Also critical is the entry of women into the workforce, the elimin- ation of children as a significant source of labour and the desire of households to attain a high level of material wellbeing (which is more difficult when resources have to be allocated to the raising of children).
However, rather than culminating in a stable situation where couples basically replace themselves with two children, these and other factors have combined in many Phase Four countries to yield a total fertility rate well below the replacement level of 2.1 (it is slightly higher than 2.0 to take into account child mortality and adults who do not have children). While the resulting ‘baby bust’ may in the short term further enable adults to travel, the long-term effects on tourism if this pattern of low fertility persists are more uncertain. One consideration is a reduced tourist market as the population ages and eventually declines, if the natural population decrease is not compensated for by appropriate increases in immigration. Another is the shrinkage of the labour force, which could reduce the amount of pension income that can be used for discretionary purposes such as travel, while forcing longer working hours and a higher retirement age to avoid future pension liabilities.
TAbLe 3.3 Australian demographic trends, 1901–2011
Year
Population (000s)
Per cent urban
Total fertility rate
Life expectancy (m/f)
Per cent population
over 64
1901 3 826 n/a n/a 55/59 4.0
1911 4 574 57.8 n/a n/a 4.3
1921 5 511 62.1 3.0 58/62 4.4
1931 6 553 63.5 2.2 63/67 6.5
1941 7 144 65.0 2.5 n/a 7.2
1947 7 579 68.7 3.0 66/71 8.0
1954 8 987 78.7 3.2 67/73 8.3
1961 10 508 81.7 3.3 68/74 8.5
1971 12 937 85.6 2.7 68/75 8.4
1981 14 923 85.7 1.9 71/78 9.8
1991 17 336 85.3 1.9 74/80 11.3
2001 19 413 n/a 1.7 77/82 12.8
2011 21 767 n/a 1.9 79/84 13.6
Source: ABS (1998, 2001, 2003, 2012), Lattimore & Pobke (2008)
population increase
All things being equal, a larger population base equates with a larger overall incidence of tourism activity. Because of a process described by the demographic transition model (DTM) (see figure 3.5), Burton’s Phase Four societies tend to have relatively large and stable populations. During Stage One (which more or less corresponds to Burton’s Phase One), populations are maintained at a stable but low level over the long term due to the balance between high crude birth and death rates. In Stage Two (cor- responding to Burton’s Phase Two), dramatic declines in mortality are brought about by the introduction of basic health care. However, couples continue to have large fami- lies for cultural reasons and for the contributions that offspring make to the household labour force. Rapid population growth is the usual consequence of the resulting gap between the birth and death rates.
As the population becomes more educated and urbanised, the labour advantage from large families is gradually lost and more resources have to be invested in children.
Subsequently, the economic and social factors described in the previous subsections begin to take effect, resulting in a rapidly declining birth rate and a slowing in the rate of net population growth during Stage Three (roughly corresponding to Burton’s Phase Three). This is occurring currently in heavily populated countries such as India, Brazil, Indonesia and China and is accompanied by the stabilisation of mortality rates (and in China by an official ‘one child per couple’ policy for most families). The conventional demographic transition is completed by Stage Four (Burton’s Phase Four), wherein a balance between low birth rates and low death rates is attained.
The confounding factor not taken into account in the traditional demographic transition model, however, is the pattern of collapsing fertility and eventual popu- lation decline. If this persists and becomes more prevalent, it may indicate a new, fifth stage of the model (see figure 3.5). The experience of Australia does not yet indicate whether very low fertility is an aberration or not, since total fertility rates have been increasing since 2001 but remain below the replacement level of 2.1 (see table 3.3). In such a scenario, only sustained large-scale immigration is sufficient to sustain even a limited pattern of net population increase.
CBR / CDR
Time
Total population
High
Low
Stage One Stage Four Stage Five?
50 40 30 20 10 0
Stage Three Stage
Two
CDR (crude death rate) Total population CBR (crude birth rate)
FIgURe 3.5 The demographic transition model
The demographic transition model basically describes the natural growth of the Australian population during the past 150 years, although the overall pattern of popu- lation increase was also critically influenced by high immigration levels as in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and western Europe. From a population of less than four million at the time of Federation, Australia’s population increased almost sixfold by 2011 (see table 3.3). Similar patterns have been experienced in all of the other Phase Four countries, culminating in the 850 million Phase Four consumers mentioned earlier.
urbanisation
As happened in Ur and Rome, the concentration of population within large urban areas increases the desire and tendency to engage in certain types of escapist tourism.
In part, this is because of urban congestion and crowding, but cities are also associ- ated with higher levels of discretionary income and education, and lower family size. Australia differs from most other Phase Four countries in its exceptionally high level of urban population, and in its concentration within a small number of major metropolitan areas. By 2012, almost two-thirds of Australians lived in the five largest metropolitan areas (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide). The ‘urban’
population in total peaked at about 85 per cent in the early 1970s and has remained at this level.
increased life expectancy
Increased life expectancies have resulted from the technological advances of the indus- trial and post-industrial eras. In 1901, Australian men and women could expect a lifespan of just 55 and 59 years, respectively (see table 3.3). This meant that the average male worker survived for only approximately five years after retirement. By 2011 the respective life expectancies had increased to 79 and 84 years, indicating 15 to 20 years of survival after leaving the workforce. This higher life expectancy, combined with reduced working time means that the Phase Four Australian male born in 1988 can look forward to 298 000 hours of discretionary time during his life, compared with 153 000 hours for his Phase Two counterpart born in 1888 (ABS).
However, favouring tourism even more is the provision of pension-based income, and improvements in health that allow older adults to pursue an unprecedented variety of leisure-time activities, assuming this pension income remains sufficient to accommo- date such discretionary expenditure.
Because of increased life expectancies and falling total fertility rates, Australia’s population is steadily ageing, as revealed in the country’s 1960 and 2010 population pyramids (see figure 3.6). From just 4 per cent of the population in 1901, the 65 and older cohort accounted for almost 14 per cent in 2011 (see table 3.3). It is conceivable that within the next two decades Australia’s population profile will resemble that of present-day Germany or Scandinavia, where 18–20 per cent of the population is 65 or older. As suggested earlier, however, elevated levels of international in-migration could at least partially offset this ageing trend.
Contributing to this process is the ageing of the so-called Baby Boomers, those born during the aforementioned era of relatively high fertility that prevailed in the two decades following World War II. The baby boom can be identified in the popu- lation pyramid by the bulge in the 45- to 64-year-old age groups. The retirement of this influential cohort, which commenced around 2008, will have significant impli- cations for Australia’s economy and social structure, as well as its tourism industry,
particularly to the extent that the attitudes and behaviour of Boomers contrasts with emerging tourism consumers born after 1980 (see the case study at the end of this chapter).
0 1 2 3
Males (%) Females (%)
Age group (years)
2010 1960
4 5
6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
85+(a) 80–84 75–79 70–74 65–69 60–64 55–59 50–54 45–49 40–44 35–39 30–34 25–29 20–24 15–19 10–14 5–9 0–4
(a) The 85+ age group includes all ages 85 years and over and is not directly comparable with the other age groups.
Source: ABS 2012b
FIgURe 3.6 Australia’s population pyramid, 1960 and 2010, by five-year age cohort