International Itineraries

Travels of our international 4WD tourists

Explore several real desert 4WD itineraries undertaken by international travel parties in 2005.  Find out who they are, where they come from and why they came to Australia.  Then follow our visitor’s journey as we discuss the structure of each trip and issues that these raise for developing and managing tourism in desert areas.

The itineraries of our three travellers represent different international markets to Australia –
backpackers ,
self-drive touring and
  a more typical mixed-mode itinerary which includes Sydney then a central corridor trip. 

Stopover locations transport and accommodation selections for each itinerary raise questions about how desert communities can most beneficially interact with international 4WD travellers and what market opportunities might exist.  Many seek to balance economic benefits from tourism with the environmental, social and cultural impacts.  For some, the impacts are so great that disengagement from tourism is the desired outcome.  But for most the biggest challenge is to provide visitors with interconnected experiences and activities along the journey in order to attract different markets.

Knowledge of itineraries for different markets is important for monitoring and managing desert 4WD tourism. 

Click here to learn more about this area of the research.

Viewing options

Google Maps Interactive map interface with satellite imagery: no software required.	Google Earth Fully interactive with flyover tours using satellite imagery (requires software & good bandwidth)
View in Google Maps  |  Read the help.   How to operate The placemarks can be viewed directly using Google Maps as no extra software is required on your computer.	View in Google Earth  |  Read the help   How to operate  Ensure you have Google Earth installed on your computer.  If not you can do so from here http://earth.google.com Click on  above to view

Technical Note:  Data for this application is sourced from the 2005 International Visitor Survey (Tourism Research Australia).  Statistical Local Area (SLA) data is the finest geographic level at which visitor stopovers can be identified using this dataset.  A ‘best fit’ technique has been applied to ensure that stopover placemarks represent the actual stopover locations.  However, because some desert SLA’s represent large land areas, the exact location of stopovers may be different to those derived using this method.

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