In Australia’s outback, youth crime stymies efforts to get tourism on track

Alice Springs, Australia – For Ben Hall, the CEO of tour bus operator AAT Kings, business lately has been tough.

He says visitors are not booking tours to Uluru, a huge sandstone monolith that is the most famous attraction in Australia’s vast Northern Territory, in the numbers they used to.

“We’ve certainly seen the trips from Alice Springs to Uluru have been a little bit softer,” Hall, who operates a fleet of about 30 buses focusing on tours to Uluru, told media.

“We’ve added a couple of new short break itineraries for this year into the region…but certainly it’s been tough trading.”

Tour and car rental companies across Australia’s Red Centre, as the country’s vast outback region is often called, have reported a similar drop-off in business.

While tourism operators attribute the decline to a number of factors, most agree that part of the cause is escalating youth crime in Alice Springs, a remote town of some 40,000 people that serves as a base for visitors to outback attractions such as Uluru.

In the past two years, youth crime in the town has captured national media attention and stoked political turmoil at the both federal and state government levels, even though crimes by minors have also risen nationwide.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who leads the centre-left Labor Party, has made several visits to the town to highlight his government’s efforts to tackle the issue.

In March, and again in July, the Northern Territory government implemented curfews banning minors from the town centre at night following a series of violent attacks.