Tourism hits record numbers

A group of young and old malibu (longboard) surfers about to go surfing at sunrise.
By Hannah Edensor


Big pats on the back for all travel industry folk today who helped Aussie tourism get over the line and hit the biggest targets yet.

The State of the Industry 2015-16 report has been officially released, and it shows that international and domestic visitors contributed a record $116.7 billion to the Australian economy, creating new jobs and reconfirming tourism’s status as a super growth sector.

The report confirms 2015-16 was a record year for Aussie tourism, and it’s going to keep tracking along nicely, with the report predicting total tourism spend forecast to reach $162 billion by 2020-21.

Produced by Tourism Research Australia (TRA), the report shows how the industry is tracking against the Tourism 2020 targets, the joint plan between industry and government to boost overnight visitor spending to between $115 billion and $140 billion by 2020.

The report reconfirms positive growth across all major Australian markets against their Tourism 2020 targets including; expenditure, visitation, aviation, accommodation and labour force.

China continues to lead market growth and encouragingly is 98 per cent of the way towards its 2020 expenditure target of $9 billion annually.

The Turnbull Government has also designated 2017 the China–Australia Year of Tourism – how cute – to further grow Australia’s tourism industry by promoting Australia to China.

More Australians than ever are deciding to take “staycations” spending a total of $59 billion with day trip visitors contributing an additional $19.6 billion to the economy.

The positive growth also extends to international aviation capacity, growing 6.2 per cent to 23.5 million available inbound seats and with accommodation room supply increasing 1.4 per cent to 249,131 rooms.

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