PROFESSOR NOEL SCOTT
MBA (Marketing), PhD Tourism Management Professor, Griffith Institute for Tourism deputy director, Griffith Institute for Tourism
Professor Noel Scott fears the Chinese stockmarket crash will hit international visitor numbers here and real estate agents might have fewer potential buyers. But major projects underpinning the upswing in Gold Coast construction look set to keep moving ahead.
Do you think the huge fall in the Chinese stockmarket will impact here more than the Greece’s financial woes? Yes. The Chinese market crash is far more significant than what is happening in Europe. Greece is a fair way away but China is front and centre for the city.
What do you think the impact will be? We’ll see fewer international visitors from China but how great the fall will be is hard to say. International travel is a discretionary spend and a lack of confidence is not good for tourism. Hopefully we will only see a short to medium-term impact. Those middle to upper class Chinese who have money invested in the stockmarket are unlikely to invest in other things, like Australian real estate. So there could be an impact on Gold Coast sales.
What about major construction projects
being built with Chinese money on the Gold Coast, such as the three-tower Jewel development in Surfers? I don’t see it being affected. Companies like Wanda (which is behind Jewel) have good support from the (Chinese) Government. They don’t want companies like this to fail.
When will we have a clearer idea of the consequences of the crash for the Gold Coast? The Chinese school holiday period is coming up later this month, so we will soon see.
Do you think the education sector on the Gold Coast will bear the brunt of the crash too? No. The last thing that the Chinese would sacrifice is their children’s education – it is too important. So that will help buffer the effects of a tourism fall because Chinese students will continue to study here and their parents will continue to visit them.
Do you think the huge drop in the stockmarket is a bad thing for China? The market was overinflated and I think it is a good thing that this has happened for China, in the long term. There has been incredible growth and this is a correction in many ways.