TRA qtrly data – Domestic #’s & $’s up

Latest International Visitor Survey (IVS) Results, Tourism Research Australia, March 2019

Year Ending September 2018

Please note that the International Visitor Survey (IVS) results for the September quarter 2018 are preliminary and do not contain any data relating to purpose of visit as there have been issues with the quality of the passenger data supplied to TRA by the Department of Home Affairs – please see International Visitor Survey methodology for further information.

Note that there are no issues with the survey collection. Work is currently in progress to resolve these issues and it is likely that a back cast of TRA data will be required. TRA will release revised estimates once a solution has been implemented.

Key findings

China continued to lead growth among the bigger markets with visitation up 8% to 1.3 million, spend up 12% to $11.5 billion, and nights increasing by 8% to reach 57.6 million. China accounted for 27% of total spend by international visitors.
There was an increase in visitation from New Zealand, the US and the UK, up 3% to 1.3 million, 736,000 and 699,000, respectively. There was stronger growth in the number of visitor arrivals from Japan, up 6% to reach 419,000.
With the exception of China, there was however a decline in the number of nights spent in Australia for the top 5 markets. Nights from the US fell 13%, New Zealand and the UK fell 7%, and Japan fell 2%.
The decline in duration of stay impacted on spend, with spend from the US down 3% to $3.6 billion. New Zealand and the UK were also both down by 2% to $2.6 billion and $3.5 billion, respectively, while Japan saw an increase in spend of 4% to $1.8 billion.
India continued to show strong growth with visitor numbers up 20% to 324,000 and trip spend up 10% to $1.6 billion.