News has worsened slightly for Australia’s tourism industry, with today’s overseas short-term arrivals and departures figures for February showing a second consecutive monthly fall in the number of inbound tourists.
The number of short-term visitor arrivals decreased by a seasonally-adjusted -0.7% in February, which followed January’s -2.4% fall, and more than offset the -0.1% reduction in short-term resident departures. That said, the ratio of annual arrivals to departures remained steady and hovers just above the 27-year low set in July 2012 (see below chart).
In the year to February 2013, the number of short-term visitor arrivals and resident departures set a new record – up 4.9% and 5.1% respectively (see next chart).
A record 6.19 million inbound tourists arrived in Australia over the year – a 30% increase on a decade ago. However, the number of Australians holidaying overseas also hit a record 8.22 million departures – a 142% increase on 10 years ago.
South East Asia (particularly Indonesia and Thailand) remains Australia’s favourite holiday destination, receiving 2,583,600 visitors in the year to February 2013, or 31.5% of Australia’s total departures. Something of a plateau has formed in the past six months. Are we running out of bogans to export? This was followed by Oceania (20%), the Americas (14%), North East Asia (11%) and North West Europe (10%):
By contrast, the most foreign visitors to Australia came from NE Asia (mostly China) and Oceania (mostly New Zealand), which accounted for 24% and 22% of arrivals respectively in February 2013:
unconventionaleconomist@hotmail.com
