Australian retailers to have a ‘cracker’ 2017

SPENDING on restaurants, holidays and entertainment is expected to dramatically jump by up to 10% in 2017, as consumers embrace a new era of ‘personalised hospitality’, Australia’s leading independent eftpos provider, Tyro,
predicted today.

Tyro CEO Gerd Schenkel said pre-Christmas hospitality sales results showed that Australian consumers were increasingly turning to small and medium size venues with personality and charm, and this was expected to continue into 2017.

“In December alone, Australia’s 62,000 small and medium sized hospitality businesses, employing up to 200 staff each, saw sales increase a staggering 10 per cent to $8 billion,” Mr Schenkel said.

“Tyro Payments expects this trend to continue in the second half of the 2017 financial year, as Australians embrace the character and personal touch that small and medium sized hotels and restaurants provide.

“Based upon the detailed sales results of thousands of our customers, we estimate SME sized hospitality sales will reach $80 billion this financial year, compared to only $24 billion for larger hospitality businesses.

“It seems David is beating Goliath when it comes to the hearts and minds of Aussie consumers, as personalised hospitality beats the often homogenous and soulless experience of some large chains.”

Likewise, Australia’s 78,000 small and medium sized retailers can also expect a bullish 2017 with December sales climbing 3% compared to the same time the previous year.

“Tyro estimates small and medium sized retailers will reach about $215 billion in sales this financial year, compared with $200 billion for the large retailing chains,” Mr Schenkel said.

“In December alone, small and medium sized retailers processed about $23.5 billion in sales, a 3% increase on the same period the previous year. “This was a cracking finish to 2016, and we expect more of the same over the
coming six months to the end of the financial year.

”The sales figures show that smaller retailers are defying the drift to international online sales, and continuing to provide a viable alternative for discerning Australian shoppers.

“In part, this is because smaller retailers are embracing online sales themselves, opening up new markets for their products.” Australia’s 1 million SMEs are critical to Australian prosperity, as they provide 8 million of the country’s 12 million jobs, and contribute more than $343 billion to the economy annually.

“We are very pleased to see the SME sector doing well,” Mr Schenkel said.
“In 2016, 54% of our SME customers were able to grow their turnover, and they did so by an average of 15% per annum.
“This is in contrast to the total economy where typically only about one third of all businesses manage to grow their income at all.”
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About Tyro Payments Limited
Tyro is an Australian Bank and operates under the supervision of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).

Tyro provides credit, debit and eftpos card acquiring, Medicare and private health fund claiming and rebating services, as well as an interest-bearing transaction and deposit account offering integration with Xero accounting software. Tyro takes money on deposit and offers unsecured cashflow-based lending to Tyro EFTPOS merchants.

Tyro currently serves more than 20,000 businesses with its own in-house, cloud-based mobile core banking platform.

For more information, visit tyro.com

Need to know more?

For more about this news story please contact:
Monica Appleby, Head of Corporate Communications on 0466 598 946 or mappleby@tyro.com
Sophie Cotterill, Corporate Communications Manager on 0414 960 292 or scotterill@tyro.com