International Visitor Numbers Breaking 8 Million Mark Good News For Gold Coast

HOME to 24 million people, Australia has finally cracked the magical eight million tourists mark.

New figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show more than eight million international visitors arrived in Australia in the 12 months from September 2015 to September this year.

Tourism Minister and Gold Coast MP Steven Ciobo said the figures were great news for the Gold Coast and marked the first time Australia had broken the eight million visitor mark.

“The more international tourists we have coming to Australia, the more we can get to visit the Gold Coast,” he said.

“I am focused on growing our tourism industry to support local businesses.”

Mr Ciobo said many initiatives had combined to help boost visitor numbers.

These ranged from increased access to online visa lodgement from 72 to more than 200 countries including China, India and Indonesia, and the introduction of a 10-year multiple-entry visitor visa to encourage repeat visitation from China.

Visa applications were now available online in Simplified Chinese — the first time Australia has trialled visa application lodgement in a language other than English — and expanded international aviation capacity, including a tripling of gateway capacity between Australia and China.

“Here on the Gold Coast, the jewel in Australia’s tourism crown, we’re seeing the results of this increased focus and investment in the tourism industry,” Mr Ciobo said.

Tourists Sandrine Gygax, 24 Swiss and Florence Gonthier, Canada loving the weather in Surfers Paradise. Pics Tim Marsden
While the ABS figures do not include a breakdown of how many of those international visitors came to the Coast, research conducted by Tourism Research Australia showed 984,000 international tourists visited the city during the 2015-16 financial year.

Released in August, the TRA International Visitor Survey not only showed more international tourists were visiting the Coast — up 14 per cent from the previous year — they are staying longer and spending more.
The survey found international visitors spent $1.27 billion on the Coast in the 2015-16 financial year, an increase of 15 per cent, or $164 million on the previous year.

Australia’s tourism industry is increasing three times as fast as the rest of the Australian economy.

Mr Ciobo said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Chinese President Xi Jinping had jointly designated 2017 as the Australia-China Year of Tourism in a bid to drive further growth from our largest tourism market.

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