Good news on arrivals
International visitors spent an extra $200 million in Queensland in the year to September, with a record number of Chinese visitors delivering the boost for the tourism industry.
The Australian Tourism Export Council has released its latest set of ‘international visitor arrival’ figures which show strong signs of growth in the American, European and Asian markets.
According to an ATEC press release, China remains Australia’s strongest international market with a 16 per cent growth in overall spending, reaching $4.7 billion in the year ending September 2013 and a 30 per cent increase in holiday spend, making this Australia’s most valuable holiday maker market.
ATEC chairman, John King said that while China and the Asian market in general continues to be a very important one for Australia, more traditional markets like the United Kingdom and USA have shown strong growth in the last 12 months.
“While China is clearly a very important and valuable market overall, and particularly those travelling here on holiday, we are now also seeing significant improvement in our traditional markets with a very healthy growth of holiday spending from the USA,” said Mr King.
“Germany, France and the UK have all been driven by leisure sector growth with spending up year –on-year for all markets – showing Australia remains a favoured destination for European travellers.”
He also pointed to an increase in arrivals from the United Kingdom coming over The Ashes series.
Mr King says the latest figures should put the Australian tourism industry in a buoyant mood, as it shows that new markets in south-east Asia and India are growing rapidly while more traditional markets are slowly starting to recover to pre-GFC levels.
“We have seen a slow recovery out of the UK and US since the global financial crisis and this is a positive sign for the future.
“This is great news for our industry as these are among our most important markets for visitors and spend, and many of our operators across Australia still rely heavily on holiday visitation from these two key markets.
“These figures make it clear that our industry must maintain a good mix of business from both the Eastern and Western markets and reinforces the value of diversity.”
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