National Visitor Survey confirms TNQ did ‘better’ than most regions in year to June

Posted on October 2, 2020 by Pete Faulkner - QLD, TNQ, Tourism, Townsville, Uncategorized

The release today by Tourism Research Australia’s National Visitor Survey for the year to June (see here for details) shows domestic visitor numbers fell by 18.8% for the year across the nation with expenditure down 16.2%,

In Queensland the declines were similar, visitors fell 19.3% while expenditure was down 15.6%.

However, it would appear that the Far North has done relatively better. In the Tropical North Queensland region overnight domestic visitors fell 12.9% with expenditure down 11.4%. The average stay in the TNQ region increased to 5.3 nights (from 5.1 a year earlier) while average trip expenditure increased by 8.8% to $1,177.

Most other regions fared far worse; visitor numbers to Sydney were down 19.6%, Brisbane was down 17.4% while Melbourne fell 23.8%.

The TRA also released their preliminary estimates for international tourism for the year to June today. Not surprisingly these show a sharp decline across the nation with international visitor numbers down 28.0%; in Queensland the drop was a similar 28.3%. The full International Visitor Survey data is set to be released later this month at which point we should get some further detail around expenditure and regional results.