News has continued to improve a little for Australia’s tourism industry, with the release of the overseas short-term arrivals and departures figures for November showing a fourth consecutive monthly lift in the number of inbound tourists and a solid rise over the year.
The number of inbound tourists rose by a seasonally-adjusted 0.8% in November and was up 5.9% over the year. However, the good news is tempered somewhat by short-term resident departures, which lifted by 2.5% in the month of November and by 7.2% over the year. As a result, the ratio of annual arrivals to departures fell by -0.1% to 75.1% in November, but remained above the 25-year lows of 74.8% hit in July 2012 (see below chart).
A chart plotting the monthly short-term arivals and departures is presented below. Note the strong growth in departures (and the stagnation in arrivals) since 2003, when the Aussie dollar began to rise in response to the commodity boom.
The year to November 2012 was a record for both inbound and outbound tourism. A record 6.1 million inbound tourists arrived in Australia over the year – a 27% increase on a decade ago (4.7 million). However, the number of Australians holidaying overseas also hit a record 8.1 million departures – a 134% increase on 10 years ago (3.4 million).
South East Asia (particularly Indonesia and Thailand) remains Australia’s favourite holiday destination, receiving a record 222,000 visitors in November, or 32% of Australia’s total departures over the month. This was followed by Oceania (21%), the Americas (13%), North East Asia (11%) and North West Europe (10%):
The bogan hotspots of Bali (Indonesia) and Thailand remain Australia’s favourite holiday destinations, with Thailand experiencing strong seasonally-adjusted growth over the month. Singapore is also emerging as a new bogan hotspot, with departures there increasing by 11% over the past year (see next chart).
Finally, the most foreign visitors to Australia came from NE Asia (mostly China), which accounted for 24% of arrivals in November 2012, and has recently overtaken Oceania (21%) as the leading source of inbound tourists:
