NATIONAL VISITOR SURVEY MONTHLY SNAPSHOT

November 2020

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to have a significant impact on Australia's domestic tourism market. Our monthly snapshots make it easier to monitor changes in tourism activity in your state or territory and nationally. You can:

• view results each month or quarterly
• compare results for the previous month and year

Overnight spend
November 2020
$4.3 billion

Down 34% on November 2019

Overnight trips
November 2020
7.0 million

Down 26% on November 2019

Nights spent on trip
November 2020
24.1 million

Down 26% on November 2019

Domestic tourism January to November 2020

Domestic overnight travel continued to be affected by COVID-19 in November 2020.

• Visitor numbers and spend softened in November compared to October. This applied to all states and territories except for Victoria.
• The fall in tourism activity is usual for November. This is due to school holidays occurring in October, and the peak Christmas and New Year holiday period beginning in December.
• Early data shows there may be further improvement nationally for the rest of 2020 and start of 2021. This is despite the effects of Sydney's COVID-19 outbreak leading into Christmas.

Domestic overnight spend

• Domestic overnight tourism saw losses of $34.0 billion (down 46%) since the start of 2020 to the end of November. This was due to the impacts of bushfires and COVID-19.
• Interstate travel accounted for $28.3 billion or 83% of the total loss in domestic overnight spend.

Domestic day trip spend

• Domestic day trips saw further losses of $8.6 billion (down 36%) since the start of 2020. This brings total domestic losses to $42.6 billion (down 43%) compared to 2019.

Overnight trips and spend November 2020

• Overnight trips fell 26% to 7 million and spend fell 34% to $4.3 billion. This was a loss of $2.2 billion from November 2019. These are the smallest monthly declines recorded since the start of the pandemic.
• The end of Victoria's lockdown saw 1.4 million overnight visitors to the state in November who spent $536 million. This was more than double the numbers seen in October.
• Interstate trips fell 69% and spend fell 74% in November 2020.

Regional visitors and spend November 2020

November results show that regional areas continued to fare better than capital cities.

• Capital cities saw domestic overnight visitors fall by 2.2 million or 53%. This resulted in losses of $2.2 billion in spend (down 64%).
• Regional Australia, however, recorded much smaller losses. Visitors were down by 450,000 or 8%, and spend fell by only $35 million or 1%. The contrast between capital cities and regional areas was most apparent in New South Wales.
  • Overnight spend in Sydney fell 71% and visitors fell 57%.
  • The number of overnight visitors to regional New South Wales were similar to those in November 2019. The number of nights that they stayed increased by 8% and spend increased 30% on November 2019.

Overall, capital cities suffered a $22.2 billion loss in spend (down by 62%) for the year to November. The losses for regional Australia were around half of that at $11.8 billion (down by 31%).