Domestic spend on the rise

domEsTic travel spending on accommodation, food and shopping were all up on prepandemic levels for Mar 2022, the latest figures from Tourism Research Australia have showed.

Total spend for the month came in at $6.8 billion, an improvement of 6% on 2019, with the biggest jump coming from travellers to the Sunshine State, which increased by 25% on pre-COVID.

Further spending gains were also made by NSW, which saw a $195 million increase for Mar 2022, up 11% on 2019.

Australia’s regional areas were the major beneficiaries of the spending increase, faring a lot better than capital cities when it came to travellers forking out money from their wallets, accounting for a 22% rise for Mar.

Conversely, capital cities suffered a 10% fall in traveller spend for Mar 2022 when contrasted with Mar 2019.

Meanwhile Western Australia, the NT, Tasmania and the ACT were also disappointing when it came to spend, all failing to reach pre-pandemic levels.

While there were some green shoots for domestic spend, the same could not be said for the total number of overnight trips taken in Mar, which were still 17% shy of 2019 volumes, recording 8.3 million total trips.

However the Mar trip numbers did manage to gain 1.2 million trips on the previous month of Feb, which suffered a significant dip in trips compared to Jan.

The total number of nights spent on domestic trips for Mar was 27.7 million, still down almost 10% on the same period in 2019.

However interstate trips continued to improve, with 2.5 million interstate overnight trips taken, up 16% on the 2.2 million trips recorded in Mar 2021.