Australia’s domestic tourism sector continues to boom, with figures released this week showing record spending levels in 2015.
According to data from Tourism & Transport Forum Australia, released by the Tourism & Transport Forum Australia (TTF), the country ended 2015 with 87.1 million overnights domestic trips, up 7% year-on-year, and AU$57.9 billion (US$43.3bn) worth of overnight revenues, up 6%.
Day trip expenditure also increased 6% to AU$19bn, alongside a 9% increase in the number of day trips, to 179.6m.
“This is another fantastic result for Australia’s domestic visitor economy and just goes to show that the Australian love affair with seeing and experiencing the delights of our own island nation is only growing,” said Margy Osmond, TTF’s CEO.
“Together with the strong performance in Australia’s international visitor market, total overnight visitor expenditure reached a record AU$94.5 billion meaning our nation’s visitor economy is well positioned to be a job and economic growth generator for years to come.”
New South Wales continues to generate the most overnight visitor revenues, with AU$16.1bn for 2015, followed by Queensland (AU$14.5bn) and Victoria (AU$12.1bn). But the Australian Capital Territory (+25%) and Tasmania (+20%) experienced double-digit growth last year.
Western Australia (US$6.7bn), South Australia (US$3.5bn) and the Northern Territory (US$1.5bn) all achieved at least 6% growth in visitor expenditure in 2015.
“Today’s figures only serve to emphasise why government should back the visitor economy as one of the pillars of Australia’s future economy,” Ms Osmond said.
“A strong partnership between government and industry is the approach we need to take the visitor economy to the next level, by encouraging more Australians to explore their homeland and attracting more international visitors to our shores, through cutting the cost of visas and improving the visitor experience.”
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