NSW Leads in Attracting Overseas Visitors

NSW Minister for Tourism Jodi McKay has backed overseas arrivals data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that shows NSW continues to attract the largest share of international visitors to Australia.

Minister McKay said results for June 2010 show 36% of all short-term overseas visitors to Australia spent the majority of their time in NSW. This compares with a 27% share for Queensland and 20% for Victoria.

Minister McKay stated "this is really positive news and reaffirms the Stateâs position as the number one Australian destination for international visitors.

"Overall, the number of short-term overseas visitors spending time in NSW in June this year increased by 6.7% compared with June 2009.

"This increase was higher than the Australian average increase of 5.3% for the same period."

The results build on the latest International Visitor Survey results from Tourism Research Australia which saw a 6% increase in the number of international visitors to NSW in the March 2010 quarter, compared to the same period in 2009.

Minister McKay said NSW is Australia's number one destination for international visitors, in terms of visitor numbers, visitor nights and visitor spending.

She added "NSW welcomed more than 2.8 million international overnight visitors in the year ending March 2010, that's more than half of all international visitors to Australia.

"To continue to attract more visitors, the NSW Governmentâs new $10 million tourism campaign for Sydney is being rolled out internationally over coming months following a very successful launch in Shanghai at the World Expo.

"We have seen outstanding initial results for the new Sydney and Regional NSW tourism campaigns, with more than 1.3 million visits to our tourism websites generating in excess of 260,000 leads for tourism business throughout the State.

"This is a massive increase of almost 50% in the number of visitors to our websites compared with the same period last year, and an increase of 32% in the number of business leads generated.

"The NSW Government has also developed successful partnerships with 13 major international airlines to help increase capacity into Sydney and drive marketing campaigns worth around $10 million a year to attract more international visitors to NSW."