NSW has made Australian tourism history, setting several new national records and a series of NSW all-time records for overseas visitation, Minister for Tourism and Major Events announced yesterday.
Mr Marshall said no other State had ever achieved such strong results in an International Visitor Survey, with NSW welcoming just over four million overseas visitors who spent $10.1 billion in the State in the year ending June 2017.
“This is a tourism result of epic proportions thanks to the hard work the NSW Government has put in since 2011,” Mr Marshall said.
“This momentous achievement is a credit to the strength of our tourism strategies, the quality of our tourism industry and our ability to attract and secure major events.”
Mr Marshall said that rural and regional NSW was also setting visitation records.
“Rural and regional NSW posted its highest volumes of international visitors, nights and expenditure on record, welcoming 813,000 international visitors who stayed 14.8 million nights and spent $1.1 billion, up more than 22 per cent,” Mr Marshall said.
“We will continue to focus on driving international visitation into Sydney and out to rural and regional NSW communities, putting tourism dollars into local economies, generating jobs and driving investment in the regions.”
NSW exceeded Victoria by over 1.2 million visitors and $2.6 billion in spend and Queensland by 1.4 million visitors and $4.9 billion in spend.
Sydney received 3.75 million international visitors who stayed 77.7 million nights and spent $9.03 billion.
Chinese visitor expenditure to NSW has exceeded the $3 billion milestone for the first time ($3.01 billion).
China continues to drive NSW’s tourism growth, with visitors up by 11.7 per cent, nights up by 20.4 per cent and expenditure up by 17.1 per cent. There was also significant growth in visitors from the USA (up by 13 per cent), Korea (up by 16 per cent), Japan (up by 18 per cent), Germany (up by 11 per cent), India (up by 12 per cent) and Indonesia (up by 27 per cent).
