Short Term Arrivals growing at fastest pace in over 11 years

Posted on August 4, 2016 by Pete Faulkner - TNQ, Tourism, Uncategorized

ABS data this morning show short term arrivals into Australia running at a record high 693,000 (seasonally adjusted) in June. This is 12.9% higher than a year ago and as such is the fastest rate of growth since Jan 2005. Over the course of the past 12 months Australia has welcomed a total of 7.84 million short term visitors which is up 9.7% from this time last year (also the best result in more than 11 years).

Arrivals from China continue to grow strongly. In June there were 103,800 arrivals (+23.3% y/y) with over 1.15 million coming in the past 12 months (+23.1% from this same stage a year ago). Chinese arrivals made up 14.7% of all arrivals for the past year; another new record high. This kind of growth should augur well for the TNQ data we’ll get in the International Visitor Survey due to be released in four weeks.

Despite the continued relative weakness in the A$ (which is certainly helping with international arrivals) short term departures were also up strongly in June to a new record high of 843,200. This is 7.1% higher than in June 2015 and brings the 12 month total to 9.67 million (up 4.3% from a year ago).