Holiday market drives growth in domestic tourism

The recent upturn in domestic overnight holiday travel gathered pace during the year ending June 2013, according to the latest National Visitor Survey released by Tourism Research Australia (TRA).

The publication shows that overnight trips for holiday were up 5% while holiday nights and expenditure increased 6% for the year.

TRA Chief Economist and General Manager Dr Leo Jago explains "there were more domestic overnight holiday trips and nights spent away in 2012-13 than at any time since 2008, prior to the Global Financial Crisis."

With the holiday market leading the way, total domestic overnight trips and visitor nights were up 3% to 75.3 million and 288 million respectively for the year.

Overnight trip expenditure grew three% to $51.4 billion for the year ending June 2013 and by a stronger 10% to $12.4 billion in the June quarter.

Dr Jago added "holiday travel was again a key driver of the strong growth in overnight trip expenditure in the June quarter 2013 with spending for this purpose up 14% over this period."

High yielding overnight trip types such as those involving air travel (13%) and use of hotel accommodation (10%) also recorded double digit growth for the June quarter.

Other key findings from the report include:

Tasmania (12%), the Australian Capital Territory (9%) and Western Australia (8%) led growth in overnight trips among the states and territories for the year.

Growth in overnight travel to visit friends and relatives saw trips increase 1% and expenditure 5% for the year, but business nights were steady.

The number of overnight business trips taken over the year was steady while nights spent away on business increased 6% and expenditure for this purpose fell 3%.

The upward trend in interstate travel continued with trips and nights up 6% and 8% respectively for the year, whereas intrastate trips increased 1% and nights were steady.

There was an increase of 5% in overnight trips involving air travel, and growth of 3% in the domestic overnight drive market over the year.

Domestic day trips were down 1% to 168 million, but day trip expenditure increased 3% to $18.1 billion during the year.

The full National Visitor Survey June 2013 publication can be accessed at

http://www.tra.gov.au