Latest international tourism data shows gains and losses

January 17, 2020

Latest data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) for international visits to Australia shows alarmingly wide performance variations among states and territories, ranging from catastrophic plunges of over 20% to strong double-digit-percentage increases.

Short-term visitor arrivals and departures data for November showed the number of short-term arrivals rose by 1.7% overall, compared to the same month of the previous year, with Tasmania and Queensland showing significant rises, of 12.9% and 8.1% respectively.

By contract, NSW and South Australia saw small declines while for the Northern Territory visitation fell by a massive 21.4%.

For other states and territories, in comparing annual change to November 2019 (original estimates):

• The ACT saw growth of +4.4%.
• NSW saw a decrease of -2.7%.
• Queensland saw an increase of +8.1% (the best performance other than Tasmania).
• South Australia saw a decline of -4.7%.
• Tasmania recorded a rise of +12.4%.
• Victoria saw an increase of +2.4%.
• Western Australia registered an increase of +6.4%.

The three leading destination countries for Australian residents in November 2019 were:

New Zealand (125,700 trips)
Indonesia (123,400)
USA (85,600).

Among the top 10 destination countries, the highest annual increases were recorded for:

Japan (+24.8%)
Indonesia (+12.4%)
India (+7.3%).

The highest annual decreases were recorded for:

Thailand (-6.6%)
USA (-5.9%)

The latest annual figures from Tourism Research Australia also shows that Queensland and Tasmania experienced significant growth in the year ending September 2019.

Image: Hobart's Wrest Point.

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