NATIONAL VISITOR SURVEY MONTHLY SNAPSHOT January 2021

Coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to have a significant impact on Australia's domestic tourism market. Improvement seen in recent months for domestic travel continued in January, despite localised COVID-19 outbreaks.

• Australians took more overnight trips in January than at any time since the start of the pandemic.
• The New Year holiday period saw most states and territories record increases in visitors and spend compared to December 2020.
• Intrastate travel continued to drive the recovery in domestic overnight travel from the lows of April and May 2020. Intrastate overnight visitors were up 3% to 7.7 million and spend was up 17% to $5.3 billion.

Domestic overnight trips and spend

• Overnight trips fell 12% to 9.4 million and spend fell 16% to $7.8 billion. This was a loss of $1.5 billion on January 2020.

• The improvements seen in the lucrative interstate market during December slowed in January. This was due to the return of some state border restrictions. Interstate trips fell 47% and spend fell 49% (or $2.3 billion) on January 2020.

Domestic day trips and spend

• Domestic day trips fell 17% to 17.5 million and spend fell 19% to $1.9 billion. This was a loss of $434 million on January 2020.

Regional visitors and spend January 2021

Regional areas continue to fare better than capital cities.

• Capital cities recorded losses of $1.9 billion in spend (down 48%). This was due to the loss of 1.5 million overnight visitors (down 38% to 2.5 million).
• Regional Australia recorded small increases in spend and overnight visitors. Overnight spend was up 7% or $358 million. Visitors were up by 1% or 38,000.
• This contrast was most apparent in New South Wales (NSW) where there were restrictions placed on areas of Greater Sydney. This was the result of a new COVID-19 outbreak:
  • Sydney overnight spend fell 74% (down $538 million). Visitors fell 63% to 329,000.
  • Regional NSW overnight spend increased 11% (up $206 million).Visitors increased 5% to 2.7 million. The number of nights stayed were also up 12% compared with the same period last year.
• Regional areas in other states also recorded increases in spend and nights in comparison to the same period last year. This included:
  • regional Victoria - spend up 9% and nights up 10%
  • regional Queensland - spend up 4% and nights up 15%
  • regional South Australia - spend up 9% and nights up 12%
  • regional Western Australia - spend up 7% and nights up 10%.