Year ending September 2021
COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on international travel to Australia over the past 2 years. The data shows the effects of this on Australia’s tourism industry.
You can:
- read about the factors influencing international travel to Australia
- see the changes compared over the time frames impacted by COVID-19.
The results for the year ending September 2020 were a large deviation from pre-pandemic levels. The summary results are compared to the year ending September 2019 (pre-COVID-19 period).
Quarterly snapshot
International visitor spend
Year ending September 2021 | $1.3 billion | Down 97.1%
International visitors
Year ending September 2021 | 155,469 | Down 98.2%
Visitor nights
Year ending September 2021 | 10.4 million | Down 96.2%
Key results
Key results for the year ending September 2021 include:
- international visitor numbers fell by 98.2% to 155,469
- international visitor spend was down 97.1% to $1.3 billion
- visitor nights were down 96.2% to 10.4 million.
Australia’s top 5 markets
Australia’s top 5 international visitor markets saw significant losses:
- Chinese visitor numbers fell 99.7%. This was a loss of 1.3 million visitors. Spend fell 99.4% or $12.2 billion.
- New Zealand visitor numbers fell 93.0%. This was a loss of 1.2 million visitors. Spend fell 88.6% or $2.3 billion. New Zealand saw the smallest losses of all markets, recording 89,000 visitors. This was more than half (57%) of all visitors to Australia for the year ending September 2021. This was due to a trans-Tasman bubble opening between the 2 countries during the June quarter 2021.
- United States of America visitor numbers fell 98.9%. This was a loss of 763,000 visitors. Spend fell 96.4% or $3.9 billion.
- United Kingdom visitor numbers fell 98.9%. This was a loss of 662,000 visitors. Spend fell 96.3% or $3.2 billion.
- Japanese visitor numbers fell 99.7%. This was a loss of 454,000 visitors. Spend fell 99.3% or $2.1 billion.
Tourism losses due to COVID-19
Total international and domestic tourism losses since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 reached $128.3 billion.
International tourism saw losses of $62.5 billion for March 2020 to September 2021. This was due to international border closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the same period, there were further losses of:
- $49.8 billion from domestic overnight travel
- $16.0 billion from domestic day travel.