Chinese tourists to Australia increase boosting its tourism profit

Australia is witnessing record profit from tourism, thanks to the surge in the number of Chinese visitors to Australia.

Australia collected a 23.4- billion-U.S. dollar windfall from international tourism over the past year, 2 billion U.S. dollars more than the previous year, revealed News Corp. Of these, Chinese tourists were a major factor in the nation’s record revenue, with 829,000 trekking Down Under in the past year — a 19 percent increase, reveals Tourism Research Australia, based on the annual figures, ending in March this year.

In particular, the rise in Victoria’s international tourism numbers were linked to marked Chinese interest. Melbourne, Victoria’s capital city, was recently crowned the world’s most livable city by the Economist magazine for the fifth- year running.

The largest growth sector was from Indian travelers, with the group’s 25 percent increase largely attributable to Australia co- hosting the ICC Cricket World Cup earlier this year.

Australia’s three mainland eastern states — New South Wales (3, 272,578), Victoria (2,230,933) and Queensland (2,196,434) — were the only three regions to have in excess of a million international visitors over the course of the year.