Australian tourists be given surf safety guidelines

Australia, 20th September: Tourists to Australia are to be provided surf safety guidelines by lifeguards in Australia following recent incidents of drowning of number foreigners on some of the famous Australian beaches.

The campaign launched by Australian lifeguards includes brochures in eight different languages and in-flight videos to put a curb on the number of drowning deaths on Australian beaches.

The tourist awareness campaign comes close on the heels of the annual report released by Surf Life Saving Australia that revealed nearly out of the total drowning victims last year, nearly one-third were foreign tourists or immigrants in Australia. The National Coastal Safety report said nearly 32 percent drowning victims were of foreign nationality while six percent were foreign tourists.

The tourist surf safety campaign designed in collaboration with multicultural advertising experts will include messages for tourists to exercise safety precautions while swimming. International tourists to Australia will be shown

The beach safety videos to be shown to international tourists to Australia during their flights will also ask them to always swim in beaches with a friend and swim between the red and yellow safety flags. Such videos will be shown from November onwards.

Some of the airlines to show surf safety videos include South African Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines, Garuda Indonesia and China Airlines.

According to Brett Williamson, chief executive of Surf Life Saving Australia, the high risk group of international tourists to Australia lack basic English skills, knowledge regarding the beach, possess inadequate skills of swimming and over-estimate their swimming ability.

This has, inadvertently, led to an increase in the number of immigrant and tourist drowning incidents each year. The year 2009-10 saw the number of deaths rise from 9 to 26.

Out of the total drowning deaths reported, nearly 80 percent were of males, 43 percent happened less than a kilometer from the lifesaving services while 52 percent took place at the beach itself.

In-flight distribution of brochures to the tourists heading for Australia will be in languages including English, Korean, Hindi, Malay, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. The in-flight pre-landing video will reach nearly 2 million international visitors to Australia and will be run for a period of six months.