Australian Bureau of Statistics
Celebrating the International Year of Statistics 2013

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FEATURE ARTICLE - Interpretation and Use of Overseas Arrivals and Departures Estimates

KEY FIGURES

		Jun 04	Jul 03
	Jul	to Jul	to Jul
	04	04	04
		%	%
	'000	change	change
Short-term visitor arrivals
Trend	435.2	0.9	. .
Seasonally adjusted	440.9	1.9	. .
Original	472.0	. .	13.6
Short-term resident departures
Trend	362.0	0.8	. .
Seasonally adjusted	363.3	-0.1	. .
Original	379.5	. .	28.0

• The trend estimate for short-term visitor arrivals to Australia during July 2004 (435,200 movements) increased by 0.9% compared with June 2004. This followed revised increases of 0.6% for May and 0.8% for June 2004.

• Short-term resident departures continued the steady monthly increase in the series since April 2003. The trend estimate for July 2004 (362,000 movements) represents an increase of 0.8% compared with the previous month and followed increases of 1.0% for both May and June 2004.

• The seasonally adjusted estimate of short-term visitor arrivals for July 2004 (440,900 movements) increased by 1.9% compared with June 2004. This followed revised increases of 0.5% for May and 1.4% for June 2004.

• Short-term resident departures for July 2004 (363,300 movements) decreased by 0.1% compared with June 2004 and followed a decrease of 5.4% for May and an increase of 5.6% for June 2004.

• In original terms there were 472,000 short-term visitor arrival movements to Australia during July 2004, representing an increase of 13.6% compared with July 2003 (415,500 movements).

• There were 379,500 short-term resident departures for July 2004, an increase of 28.0% compared with July 2003 (296,500 movements).

• Original estimates are influenced by seasonal and one-off irregular factors which can distort interpretations of the underlying growth in the series. Therefore, the ABS encourages the use of the trend estimates for time series analysis.

ISSUE	RELEASE DATE
August 2004	14 October 2004
September 2004	15 November 2004
October 2004	13 December 2004
November 2004	14 January 2005
December 2004	16 February 2005
January 2005	15 March 2005

• A feature article, Seasonally Adjusted and Trend Estimates – Adding Value to the Analysis of Short-term Movements, has been included in this issue.

• The Standard Errors section has been updated and presents sample standard errors for movements up to 5 million.

• Passenger card samples during the period July 2001 to June 2004 were not completely random. As of this issue the passenger card processing system has returned to a fully random sample. See the paragraph on sampling method in the Appendix

• The presentation of information on countries will be based on the Standard Australian Classification of Countries (SACC). This will replace the currently used Australian Standard Classification of Countries for Social Statistics (ASCCSS). For more detailed information refer to the ABS publication Standard Australian Classification of Countries (SACC), 1998 (cat. no. 1269.0).

• Four new tables will be included in this publication. These tables will present trend and seasonally adjusted estimates for short-term visitor arrivals by country of residence and short-term resident departures by country of destination. As a result of these additional tables, the current table numbers will change.

• The lists of countries in tables 3, 5 and 8 will be revised to reflect current trends. Due to space considerations, there will be fewer countries printed in current tables 3 and 5 of this publication. Expanded lists of countries for these tables will be available electronically under Time Series Spreadsheets.

• The key figures will be revised to include the year apart growth measure for trend estimates, and exclude the year apart growth measure for original estimates. The tables in the main features will also be revised to present data for trend estimates, rather than original estimates. For further information refer to the Feature article, Seasonally adjusted and Trend Estimates – Adding Value to the Analysis of Short-term Movements.

SHORT-TERM VISITOR ARRIVALS, Major Source Countries - July 2004
	July	July	Numeric	Percentage
	2004	2003	change	change
	'000	'000	'000	%
New Zealand	108.1	82.9	25.2	30.4
Japan	57.0	45.7	11.3	24.8
United Kingdom	45.3	45.0	0.3	0.7
United States of America	45.0	44.6	0.4	0.9
China	26.4	11.3	15.0	132.6
Korea	19.9	21.0	-1.1	-5.5
Singapore	16.9	18.9	-2.0	-10.5
Hong Kong (SAR of China)	14.4	13.3	1.1	8.0
Malaysia	13.1	14.4	-1.4	-9.5
Germany	11.6	12.8	-1.1	-8.8

SHORT-TERM RESIDENT DEPARTURES, Major Destinations - July 2004
	July	July	Numeric	Percentage
	2004	2003	change	change
	'000	'000	'000	%
New Zealand	69.5	50.5	19.0	37.7
United Kingdom	36.8	30.4	6.4	21.1
Indonesia	34.3	18.0	16.3	90.9
United States of America	27.9	25.4	2.5	9.8
Thailand	16.0	9.3	6.8	72.9
Fiji	15.5	15.4	0.1	0.4
Singapore	14.5	13.1	1.5	11.1
Malaysia	13.3	9.5	3.8	39.8
China	12.2	6.2	6.0	96.5
Hong Kong (SAR of China)	10.9	8.3	2.6	31.8