National Visitor Survey results March 2022

Year ending March 2022

The National Visitor Survey (NVS) results provide statistics on how Australian residents travel within Australia. You can find national, state and territory results for the:

• number of trips taken
• nights spent on a trip
• amount spent on a trip.

You can also:

• read about the factors influencing travel within Australia
• see the changes compared over various timeframes impacted by COVID-19.

Unless state otherwise, we compared:

• the summary results for the March 2022 quarter to the March 2020 quarter
• the year ending March 2022 to the year ending March 2020.

We use March 2020 as the comparison year despite it being partially impacted by COVID-19. Most of the March 2020 quarter and the year ending March 2020 were unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Key results

Domestic trips and spend for year ending March 2022

For the year ending March 2022:

• Domestic overnight trips fell 27% to 82.1 million.
• Spend fell 20% or $15.4 billion to $63.3 billion.
• Travel restrictions had a greater impact on interstate movement:
  • Interstate trips were down 51% to 17.9 million. Spend was down 43% to $25.0 billion.
  • Intrastate trips were down 15% to 64.2 million. Spend was up 10% to $38.4 billion.
• Regional areas continued to fare better than capital cities over the year:
  • Overnight trips to regional Australia were down 17% to 58.0 million. Spend was down 1% to $40.2 billion.
  • Capital city overnight trips were down 42% to 27.3 million. Spend was down 39% to $23.1 billion.

Domestic trips and spend for March quarter 2022

For the March quarter 2022:

• The continued easing of border restrictions, health regulations and lockdowns saw improvements in domestic tourism:
  • Domestic overnight trips increased by 1% to 24.6 million.
  • Spend increased by 14% or $2.6 billion to $20.1 billion.
• Spend recovery was driven by an increase in spend on:
  • Accommodation ─ up 33% or $1.6 billion
  • Eating out ─ up 23% or $686 million
  • Petrol ─ up 21% or $396 million
  • Shopping ─ up 22% or $270 million.
• Increased spending on holidays also contributed to the strong performance of the quarter. Holiday spend increased by 29% or $3 billion from the March quarter 2020.

Total pandemic tourism losses

Domestic and international tourism losses have totalled $156.8 billion since the start of the pandemic. These losses include:

• $56.2 billion for domestic overnight travel
• $18.7 billion for domestic day trips
• $81.9 billion for international travel.

Download the report

Explore overnight trips data

Interact with our data for domestic overnight trips for year ending March 2022. You can view the data by:

• state or territory
• capital city or region
• interstate or intrastate trips
• accommodation type
• reason for travel.

Data tables

Read more

• Read the National Visitor Survey Methodology
• Find older data tables and other publications on our Data and research page
• We produce a monthly snapshot of the National Visitor Survey