NZ leads Jul travel stats

NEW Zealand was the top outbound destination for Australian travellers during Jul, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday reporting almost 120,000 Australian “shortterm resident returns” from NZ during the month.

That was just ahead of the 115,000 returns from Indonesia, with the USA in third position with just under 90,000 Aussie travellers.

The monthly figures indicated an overall annual growth of 2.4% in the trend estimate for overseas travel by Australians, with the fastest growth recorded for Japan (up 13.8%), Indonesia (up 8.9%) and India (up 8.2%).

Over the last 12 months there’s been a significant decline in departures to Singapore (down 8.9%) and Thailand (down 5.9%), while travel to the USA has also softened by about 3.1%.

Inbound travel during Jul was up 3.3% year-on-year, with China the biggest source of visitors, accounting for 15% of all arrivals with 123,000 trips.

That was fractionally ahead of New Zealand, with 117,300 Kiwis heading across the Tasman, while the USA was again in third position with 70,100 visitors.

The highest annual increases were recorded for travel to Australia from Singapore (up 12.6%), India (up 11.4%) and the USA (up 10.7%).

Inbound travel declined year-onyear from Malaysia (down 6.9%), South Korea (down 5.2%) and the United Kingdom (down 1.7%).

Australian Tourism Industry Council Executive Director, Simon Westaway, said the figures were further vindication of the Tourism 2020 national tourism strategy.

However he warned of the “stark fact” that only a handful of regions had benefited from the wave of international tourist arrivals, saying Australia’s next long-term strategy should better address regional dispersal.