Overseas visitors shun NSW regional attractions

NSW Government plans to promote tourism in regional NSW has led to a decline in the number of international visitors heading outside Sydney over the past year.
The NSW Government has a target to double overnight tourism expenditure by 2020 through Destination NSW, an agency with a $135 million annual budget.
However, despite Destination NSW pumping $18 million into regional promotions over the past year, a NSW Auditor-General's report found visitor numbers plunged by 43,000 to 570,000, a fall of 7% in one year.
The Auditor-General, Peter Achterstraat, said the only explanation he had received from Destination NSW was that the slide was due to a fall in the number of backpackers.
Overall, the declining number of travellers from traditional markets such as the United Kingdom, the USA and New Zealand, discouraged by the high Australian dollar, has affected regional he regions hard.
With foreign visitor numbers to Sydney down just 0.6% to 2.6 million, it was believed the regions were being affected because Asian tourists, the main growth area of the market, preferred to stay in Sydney.
Tourism Industry Council NSW General Manager Andrew Jefferies told Fairfax Media "there are certainly changes in the mix. Most international tourists from China are first-time travellers who don't disperse as much as the traditional visitors from the UK, US and New Zealand."
The changing traveller mix raised questions about whether Destination NSW had the right priorities in its promotional budget, with Achterstraat finding that the agency spent $18 million on marketing for regional areas compared to $8 million spent on Sydney-focused programs.
In turn, spending by international tourists in regional areas fell due to a 5.6% decline in international visitors. Foreign tourists spent $660 million in regional areas in 2011-12 compared to $699 million in the previous year.
International visitors spent $5.44 billion in Sydney, and fractionally less than $5.45 billion in 2011.