Is Queensland getting its tourism mojo back?

Posted on June 18, 2018 by Pete Faulkner - QLD, Tourism, Uncategorized

Today’s short term arrivals and departures data for April give us a tantalising suggestion that Queensland might just be getting its tourism mojo back. The TRA International Visitor Survey (which was due on June 6th) for the March quarter is yet to be released and that will help to confirm, but at this stage there appears to certainly have been an improvement for the Sunshine State.

Clearly part of that can be put down to the 2018 Commonwealth Games held in the Gold Coast during April, but how much we will only be able to tell in coming months.

Today’s data showed short-term arrivals up just 0.6% y/y but an annual increase of 6.1%. Chinese visitations (which had seen something of a slowdown) were back on an upward trajectory increasing 9.0% y/y and 12.9% annual. We’re not back to the levels seen in the middle of last year, but at least the downward trend has been arrested. It would seem unlikely that much of the Chinese rebound could be pegged to the Commonwealth Games.

When we consider the data for State of Intended Stay (and the Conus Trend analysis of the original ABS data) we see a distinct improvement for Queensland. The year on year Trend for Queensland was up 7.6%, faster than either Victoria (+7.5%) or NSW (+2.0%) and significantly better than the national average of 4.8%. There’s still some way to go to close the gap that opened up in 2014 with Victoria, but at least it’s now closing. We’ll have to see if this can continue once we see the Commonwealth Games effect wash out of the data in coming months.

The TRA National Visitor Survey for the March quarter, which provides us with data on domestic travel, is due for release later this week. There is no date as yet for the release of the delayed International Visitor Survey.