Australian Tourism Achieves Another Record Year

13 February 2017

Figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, show that all of Australia’s top 15 key international markets posted growth in 2016, with nine markets recording double digit increases.

For the first time in a calendar year, Australia welcomed 8.26 million international visitors in 2016, after posting an increase of 11 per cent on the previous year, to achieve another record year for tourism.

“The record results confirm the strength of Australia’s tourism industry and desirability of our tourism offering internationally,” said Tourism Australia Managing Director John O’Sullivan.

“It is terrific to see that alongside our key markets in Asia such as China, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, India, Singapore and Indonesia, that the USA also posted a double digit increase in visitors in 2016,” he said.

In the 12 months to December 2016, arrivals from China, Japan and South Korea grew by 16.9 per cent, 22.7 per cent and 23.7 per cent respectively.

Other markets to post double digit growth in visitor numbers for the year included the USA (16.4%), Malaysia (14.3%), India (11.3%), Indonesia (13.8%) and Singapore (10.7%).

New Zealand remains Australia’s largest market by visitor arrivals, also delivered a 2.7 per cent increase to reach 1.3 million visitors in 2016.

Growth in visitor numbers to Australia was driven by the leisure segment (+13.7%), in particular by holiday arrivals (+21.6%) across the 12 months.