International tourism results December 2021

Notes on the data

• We compared the summary results to the year ending March 2020 (pre-COVID period). This is because the results for the year ending March 2021 were a large deviation from pre-pandemic levels.
• We have updated the July 2021 to December 2021 data. We did this to reflect changes in Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Overseas Arrivals and Departures data. You can find more information about this update on the ABS website.

Key results

Key results for the year ending March 2022 include:

• International visitor numbers fell by 94.0% to 483,057.
• International visitor spend was down 88.3% to $4.9 billion.
• Visitor nights were down 85.0% to 38.6 million.

Australia’s top 5 markets

Australia’s top 5 international visitor markets saw significant losses:

• Chinese visitor numbers fell 98.4%. This was a loss of 1.1 million visitors. Spend fell 95.0% or $9.7 billion.
• New Zealand visitor numbers fell 91.3%. This was a loss of 1.1 million visitors. Spend fell 85.4% or $2.1 billion. New Zealand saw the smallest losses of all markets, recording 108,000 visitors. This was 22% of all visitors to Australia for the year ending March 2022. This was due to a trans-Tasman bubble opening between the two countries during the June quarter 2021. The bubble operated on and off to the end of the year.
• The United States of America visitor numbers fell 94.9%. This was a loss of 678,000 visitors. Spend fell 90.2% or $3.3 billion.
• United Kingdom visitor numbers fell 89.8%. This was a loss of 572,000 visitors. Spend fell 81.9% or $2.6 billion.
• Japanese visitor numbers fell 98.3%. This was a loss of 418,000 visitors. Spend fell 96.4% or $1.9 billion.

Tourism losses during the pandemic

Total international and domestic tourism losses since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020) reached $156.8 billion.

International tourism saw losses of $81.9 billion overall for March 2020 to March 2022. This was due to international border closures caused by the pandemic. Australia’s border reopened to all international visitors on 21 February 2022.

Over the same period, there were further losses of:

• $56.2 billion from domestic overnight travel
• $18.7 billion from domestic day travel.

Data tables