Australia pocketed a whopping $3 billion in Chinese visitor spend in the March quarter alone, and the Indians love of cricket was enough to bowl them over to our shores, latest stats reveal.
Tourism Research Australia’s latest International Visitor Survey for the year ending March 2015 revealed total international visitor spend hit an all time high of $32.5 billion, up 10% from 2014 stats during the same period.
Chinese visitor spend was up 25% to hit a total of $6.4 billion, of which $3 billion was contributed by the March quarter alone off the back of Chinese New Year celebrations and major events.
China now accounts for 20% of all trip spend by international visitors to Australia, up 7% from ten years ago.
“The 32% increase this quarter in Chinese spending is unprecedented and testament, I think, to our strategy of moving away from group tour business towards the much more lucrative free and independent travel segment,” Tourism Australia, managing director, John O’Sullivan said.
Total international arrivals were up 8% and a 7% increase in visitor nights was reported for the quarter.
On trend, the Chinese visitor market drove overall results, with an additional 129,000 visitors, followed by 50,000 more Kiwis and an additional 45,000 visitors from the USA.
Arrivals from China and India show no signs of weakening; with in fact both markets accelerating growth at remarkable pace at 18.7% from China and 25% from India. Visitors from India increased 78% since 2010, only second to China which has shot up 138% for the same period. Increases for all other countries combined sits at 16%.
“Who can forget those Indian cricket fans packing out our cricket grounds during the Cricket World Cup? They may not have won the world cup, but they certainly won the hearts of many of our tourism operators, with holiday spending from India up 125% in the quarter,” O’Sullivan said.
Complimenting China and India’s rapid increase is the rest of Asia, with double-digit growth from Hong Kong and Malaysia, while Japanese travellers remain stable. Despite not showing double-digit growth, Singapore led a strong arrival period up 6% to 325,000 and spending up 8% to $1.2 billion.
Meanwhile, the average length of stay, which includes long stay travellers, was marginally down to 36 nights.
Unsurprisingly, despite holiday travellers leading the arrival growth, it was business visitors who were the highest yielding per night, typically staying in swankier accommodation.
State to state arrivals varied, and only South Australia didn’t reap any increased benefit from international expenditure.
Growth was spread widely across with Tasmania leading the charge with a strong increase of 28%, albeit from a smaller base.
New South Wales increased 6.7% or an additional 205,000 visitors to 3.3 million in total, almost 1.1 million travellers more than either Victoria or Queensland. Victoria increased 11.6% or an additional 232,000 international travellers to 2.2 million and Queensland reported similar figures and was up 7% increase.
International visitors attributed around $7.5 billion to NSW’s economy, up 9% year on year. 
“Visitors stayed a record total of almost 79 million nights in NSW, compared to 53 million nights in Victoria and 48 million nights in Queensland. We are clearly number one in Australia,” Minister for Trade, Tourism and Major Events Stuart Ayres said.
Sydney took the biggest slice of cake with an increase of 7%, while regional NSW also reported increases with international visitors to the Hunter Valley up by 14% and Blue Mountains up by 15%.
Meanwhile, the Sunshine Coast welcomed double that of QLD’s growth to achieve 14% increases for the period to March due to a 9.2% rise in domestic travel which is expected to rise after last week’s announcement of Qantas returning services to the region.
Key growth markets to the Sunny Coast was from northern Europe, with Germany up 37%, Scandinavia up 19.2%, and UK up 15.2%.
“The Germans and Dutch just love the Hinterland, the nature and being able to chill out without the overcrowded tourist spots in many parts of Australia,” Sunshine Coast Destination ceo, Simon Ambrose, said.
N.B. All percentage changes are as compared to year ending March 2014 and all estimates relate to visitors aged 15 years and older. Source: International Visitor Survey, March quarter 2015. For the full report and methodology go to tra.gov.au
Image: Tourism Research Australia IVS & Guardian.co.uk
