A Global Tattoo Trend Index has inked Australia as a fairly ordinary player in the wide world of ink
A GLOBAL Tattoo Trend Index has inked Australia as an ordinary player in the game. What are our tattoo artists doing wrong?
DELHI and Bristol are the number one and two cities where tattoos are given as gifts from parents while Cape Town is big time when it comes to tatts in terms of affordability and parlour availability
The city with the highest percentage of ‘tattoo tourism’ is Denpasar, Indonesia, while Colombo in Sri Lanka has the most affordable hourly rate for getting inked at a snip: $22.
Meanwhile, no parents gift tatts to their kids in Sydney while the city is the tenth most expensive country to get inked but is the 13th most popular for “Tattoo Tourism”.
But get this.
Out of 100 cities calculated in terms of emblem affordability, availability of tattoo parlours, “gifting” tatts and “tattoo tourism”, Melbourne came in at 73 (with 10% given as gifts from parents); Brisbane comes in at 75 and Sydney at a paltry 93.
The e-commerce video retail app YEAY created the tattoo rankings by analysing how the world perceives and purchased tattoos throughout the entire year.
With tattoos having become the absolute norm for so many - and some of the design choices sensational - the overall demand and availability of parlours may be growing but the way consumers are buying their ink markings are changing.
Melanie Mohr, founder of YEAY, who compiled the inky statistics, says the findings of the study show that family and loved ones are purchasing tattoos for one another.
“It’s great that a pattern we detected within the YEAY app is largely replicated in many locations across the world. Additionally, the findings in relation to ‘tattoo tourism’ are fascinating.”
The results reveal that Sydney, Australia offers an hourly average cost of $176 USD to be inked, the 10th most expensive rate in the Index.
This compares to the most affordable city Colombo at $22 per hour and the most expensive city San Francisco at $280. 70% of the tattoos in Sydney are purchased by tourists, making the city the 13th most popular destination for tattoo tourism.
Other interesting trends from the ‘Tattoo Index’ include:
•The city with the most parlours per capita was Miami Beach, USA with 28.48 per 100,000 citizens.
•The city with the cheapest tattoo parlours was Colombo, Sri Lanka at an average cost of $22.00 per hour.
•The city with the most expensive tattoos was San Francisco, at an average cost of $280.00 per hour.
•Denpasar, Indonesia is the city where tattoos were most likely to be purchased by visitors with a 99% likelihood.
•Tahiti, French Polynesia and Auckland, New Zealand were found to be the cities where tattoos are most likely to be gifted at 60%.
•Gifted tattoos are most likely to be given by parents in Delhi, India (60%); ‘other’ family members in Milan, Italy (50%); from friends in Reykjavik, Iceland (90%) and from a partner in Madrid, Spain and Córdoba, Argentina (99%).
As part of the Tattoo Index, YEAY ran the survey comprising 5,000 participants on the general topic ‘tattoo’. The results revealed that while only a small minority of respondents (13.6%) have a tattoo, the majority (66.3%) consider tattoos to be mainstream.
The findings also revealed the breakdown of the ways in which people with tattoos found their tattoo artist: through a recommendation (54.2%), visiting parlours (23.2%), online (13.6%), and other (8.9%).
Originally published as A Global Tattoo Trend Index has inked Australia as a fairly ordinary player in the wide world of ink