This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
THERE are 418,000 fewer people in Australia’s five largest CBDs every day than there were pre-COVID, according to new research, with the sluggish return to the office the key reason that nearly $6.3 million is less being spent each work day on coffees, food and shopping.
Data from the PAR Group shows the office workforce has been the biggest impact on the lower numbers. CBD visitations rates are at 63.8% of December 2019 levels, attributed to the increase in working from home and the office vacancy rates in Sydney and Melbourne.
There are 372,158 fewer office workers in the office than in December 2019, a large proportion of the estimated 418,513 fewer people visiting the capital cities on a typical day.
Assuming $15 per day spending, there is around $6.28 million less being spent in capital cities than 2019 every work day. This equates to around $2.29 billion annually.
“The pandemic induced numerous behavioural changes, such as more working from home, online business video meetings and online studying,” PAR Group’s Damian Stone said.
“This, combined with reduced international and domestic travel, has resulted in the estimate number of visitors to Australia’s largest five capital cities in December 2023 being down 17.3% from December 2019 pre-pandemic levels.”
The figure shows an uplift of 14.8% since the end of December 2021.
Of the capitals, Perth is the only capital city to record more office workers in 2023 than 2019. In comparison, the number of office workers per day in lockdown-whacked Melbourne is down 54.3%, according to PAR Group, while Sydney is down 39.1%.
Adelaide recorded the highest visitation rates of international visitors, at 90% of 2019 levels. Melbourne was weakest, at 66.4%.
Domestic travel is only slightly lower across the capital cities. Brisbane is the strongest performer, at 96.4%, while Perth is the weakest at 87.3%, probably due to reduced business travel as workers opt for Zoom and Teams meetings.
Intrastate business travel is down 29.5%, declining the greatest in Perth, by 45.5, while Sydney recorded the smallest fall, at 20.2%.
International students’ enrolments are at 99.1% of 2019 levels, and have rebounded by 36.7% since 2021
