Visitors numbers to Australia remained flat in 2011 as leisure visitors from traditional markets declined, offsetting strong growth from Asia, according to the latest figures.
Tourism Research Australia’s International Visitor Survey revealed that inbound holidaymakers fell 4% to 2 billion as economic instability in traditional markets Europe and the US, the high dollar and natural disasters took their toll.
Growth of 2% from Asian markets helped to counterbalance the decline to see overall visitor numbers remain flat compared with the previous year, with 5.4 million visitors.
Tourism Australia managing director Andrew McEvoy labelled China the “stand out” as the market grew 19% to 513,000 visitors and Chinese spending rose 15% to $3.8 billion.
“We continue to see a story of two worlds – strong growth from a buoyant near world, helping to offset declines from our traditional far world markets,” he said.
However, he was encouraged by growth of 4% in both visitor nights and expenditure.
“Overall, although arrivals are flat, visitor nights and spend are up, both for the quarter and for the year, which is good news for Australian tourism,” McEvoy said.
