Tuesday 20 December 2011

Sydney Still Top Spot for Domestic Visitors


Sydney remains Australia’s magnet for domestic visitors with the Harbour City recording an eight per cent increase in tourists in the year to September.

The latest National Visitor Survey results released this week show a strong growth in domestic visitors to Sydney, with a corresponding hike in overnight stays and visitor expenditure.

Minister for Tourism and Major Events, George Souris,  said “Sydney is still the favourite destination for domestic visitors.”

There are more visitors to Sydney who are spending more money, with an increase of nearly six per cent in domestic visitor nights and 6.5 per cent in expenditure for the year to September.

This means visitors to Sydney alone have injected $4.9 billion into the NSW economy, $301 million above the previous September year.

Overall there were 24 million domestic visitors to NSW who spent nearly $13 billion and stayed 81 million nights – the last two measures growing faster than the national average growth rates.”

NSW received 34.5 per cent of all domestic overnight visitors and 30.9 per cent of all nights in Australia over the year ending September 2011.

While Sydney is still the prime drawcard for the domestic market, it’s also encouraging to see visitation to some NSW regions rising significantly, with the South Coast up 22 per cent for the September quarter and the Snowy Mountains up 13 per cent for the year.

To see such strong results for our domestic market over the past year is heartening and is testament to the significant marketing push Destination NSW is leading in key markets.

Mr Souris said the encouraging domestic results followed strong results last week showing the expenditure by international visitors to NSW increased by nearly six per cent and almost five per cent visitor nights in the year ending September 2011 – both better than national average.

Destination NSW is running a number of domestic campaigns and promotions to attract visitors to the Premier State.

"NSW is supporting Tourism Australia’s ‘No Leave, No Life’ campaign, encouraging people to spend their annual leave on a domestic holiday, and generating strong interest with regional campaigns,” Mr Souris said. “Destination NSW is also heavily promoting a series of major events during the summer months, particularly the 2012 Sydney Festival.”

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