New data from the Tourism Research Australia (TRA) Visitor Survey shows a surge of visitors to Canberra with numbers breaking the three million mark for the first time.
The TRA data shows that 3.07 million Australian and 270,853 international visitors came to Canberra in the year ending September 2019 – a period that covered the Floriade spring period.
“This represents an 8.1 per cent increase in domestic visitors and saw the ACT lead all other Australian States and Territories in percentage growth for overnight international visitation,” Associate Director, Research and Consumer Insight at VisitCanberra, Peta Lemmon, said.
“International visitors increased by 8.8 per cent compared to the same period last year and ahead of the national average growth of 2.5 per cent,” she said.
She said international visitors to Canberra spent $601.9 million in the January to September period surveyed.
“A rise in people visiting for holidays and business bumped up the domestic numbers while growth in the leisure market of people coming for holidays and to visit family and friends contributed to the international growth,” Ms Lemmon said.
She said the combined overnight expenditure received for the period surpassed the ACT’s Tourism 2020 target of reaching $2.5 billion by December 2020.
