Can you guess which country Aussies flew to most in 2017?

Young woman with a map in Florence, Italy

We love statistics and figures, we’d hate to be the ones that put them together, but we thoroughly enjoy looking at them and pretending we understand it all.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released its Overseas Arrivals and Departures for 2017, and there are some interesting takeaways.

First and foremost, these are the top 10 countries visited by Australians in 2017:

New Zealand
Indonesia
USA
UK
Thailand
China
Singapore
Japan
India
Fiji

Did you guess right?

The winner of the pack, New Zealand, had 1.42 million Aussies on its shores in 2017, a growth of 6 per cent from 2016.

Thailand had 582,000 Aussies in 2017, increasing 6.2 per cent from the previous year, while the US experienced a fall of 0.5 per cent.

China’s tourism has grown, increasing 15 per cent, reaching the half million mark for visitors. A

As well as this, India’s popularity is on the rise.

The nation brought in 14.2 per cent more Aussies than the previous two years, pulling in 362,300 tourists.

To see the full report, visit this site.

Last year, a report by moneysmart.gov.au, which looked at Aussie tourism numbers, found that:

47 per cent of Australians save for holidays, among which 39 per cent save for overseas holidays.
According to the Australian Bureau of statistics, the number of Australians who travelled overseas rose by five per cent from 9.45 million travellers in 2015 to 9.92 million travellers in 2016.
The main reasons for which people travelled overseas are holidays (59.3 per cent), visiting friends/relatives (23.9 per cent), and business (8.7 per cent).

The most visited destinations travelled to by Australians in 2016:

When travelling abroad, Australians majorly visited New Zealand (13.36 per cent), Indonesia (12.63 per cent), United States (10.64 per cent), and United Kingdom (5.93 per cent).

We have looked into the evolution of the general interest on these destinations between 2015 and 2016, through Google search. The searches on New Zealand, United States, and United Kingdom have increased respectively by 24 per cent, 17.7 per cent, and 27.7 per cent while the searches on Indonesia decreased by seven per cent.

Infographic - Top Destinations

From which region in Australia people travel more?

The most populated regions come first in terms of the number of travellers. New South Wales leads the ranking with 3.4 million followed by Victoria (2.5 million), Queensland (1.7 million), Western Australia (1.3 million), South Australia (475 thousand), Capital Territory (188 thousand) and finally Northern Territory and Tasmania both with 99 thousand.

Do you have something to say on this? Get in touch with Travel Weekly Editor Daisy Doctor here to share your thoughts.

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Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

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