Tanya Chikritzhs
For many, alcohol is tightly woven into Australia’s tourism identity. From winery tours to pub crawls, alcohol is often sold as part of the experience.
Some believe that restrictions on alcohol sales in regional towns aimed at curbing alcohol-related problems may discourage visitors and undermine local economies.
This has largely remained unquestioned and entrenched particularly within tourism and related industries.
However, after analysing 20 years of government tourism data, our recent research findings appear to have turned this commonly held belief on its head.
Why some towns go dry
Alcohol restrictions in regional and remote areas of Western Australia are in response to high levels of serious alcohol-related problems, including violence, crime and public disorder.
Section 64 of Western Australia’s Liquor Act allows the Director of Liquor Licensing to impose mandatory restrictive conditions on the sale and supply of alcohol by one or more licensed outlets.
These limitations affect the sale of packaged liquor across an entire area (and potential purchasers in that area) rather than targeting specific populations.
Cut backs mainly involve packaged liquor sales such as the time of day or week, or the quantity, or product type.
In rural and remote parts of WA, these limits have historically been used to curb alcohol sales in licensed outlets across communities, such as in Halls Creek. Controls are also in place across large geographic regions that have multiple localities, such as the Pilbara and Kimberley. Similar approaches which limit alcohol availability have been used elsewhere in Australia, including parts of the Northern Territory and Queensland.
These controls are after decades of research showing how alcohol harms decline in response to additional limits on availability. Even where there are high levels of alcohol-related problems, governments and businesses still frame alcohol as integral to creating a local leisure culture that is attractive to domestic and international tourists.
From this comes a widespread assumption: if you restrict alcohol, tourists won’t come. But tourists don’t only seek nightlife or an alcohol-centred experience.
Most visitors to WA, for example, cite natural landscapes, beaches and outdoor activities as their main motivation. International tourists in particular, spend more time sightseeing than drinking. Alcohol-centred activities are not necessarily the cornerstone of regional tourism.
Tourism doesn’t appear to be impacted
We analysed data from Tourism Research Australia that covered all five WA tourism regions -Perth, Coral Coast, South-West, North-West and Golden Outback- between 1999 and 2021.
We looked at the annual estimated number of trips made by tourists that involved at least one overnight stay.
Two of these regions – the North-West (home to Broome and the Kimberley) and the Golden Outback (including Kalgoorlie) – had area-wide alcohol restrictions in the early 2000s.
If such controls deterred tourists, we would expect to see a sustained decline in visitor numbers to these regions compared with others.
Instead, we found overnight visitors increased sharply after restrictions were introduced. In the North-West, visits grew by 170% and in the Golden Outback, numbers rose almost 60%. Visitor trends over time in restricted regions were similar to those in non-restricted regions.
Imposing additional license conditions which reduced alcohol availability didn’t seem to damage tourism. Visitors seem to prefer safer environments where take-away alcohol is less readily accessible.
Before imposing bans, towns like Katherine in the NT struggled with reports of public drunkenness and antisocial behaviour. Tourists reportedly skipped overnight stays, costing local businesses millions.
Recently in Alice Springs, tourism operators warned visitors to bypass the town after alcohol restrictions were relaxed and crime spiked.
Controlling sales could improve a destination’s image rather than harm it as it addresses visible alcohol-related problems.
Benefits for everyone
Decision-makers often face pushback from industry and local stakeholders who fear tourism losses if alcohol is restricted or banned. But in our study, we did not find any evidence that it would stifle tourism. In fact, the opposite was seen with visitor numbers growing in some areas.
Findings from this study have national relevance. Alcohol is a leading driver of preventable injuries and violence across Australia. Regional communities continue to grapple with its impacts.
This new evidence suggests it is possible to protect community wellbeing without sacrificing tourism. Controlling sales may even strengthen local tourism and support long-term sustainability by improving safety and reputation. It may also be helpful for future research to investigate whether there are changes in visitors’ spending habits after restrictions are in place and explore tourists’ perceptions.
But the message from the current research is clear – controlling alcohol sales need not be bad for business. They may even bring mutual benefit and support long-term, sustainable growth in tourism.
Image: Eeshan Garg, Unsplash
Professor Tanya Chikritzhs is Program Lead for the Alcohol Policy and Strategies team at the National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University.
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