VISITOR TRAVEL IN AUSTRALIA

Day visitors

Day visitors are those who travel for a round trip distance of at least 50 kilometres, are away from home for at least four hours, and who do not spend a night away from home as part of their travel. Same-day travel as part of overnight travel is excluded, as is routine travel such as commuting between work, school and home.

During the year ended 31 December 2008, there were 136 million day visitors in Australia, by Australian residents aged 15 years and over, a decrease of 12.1 million day visitors from 148 million day visitors in 2007 (table 23.13).

23.13 DAY VISITORS(a), By state/territory visited
	Destination
	NSW	Vic.	Qld	SA	WA	Tas.	NT	ACT	Aust.(b)
	’000	’000	’000	’000	’000	’000	’000	’000	’000
2004	40 505	30 655	30 938	9 735	11 448	3 958	908	1 422	129 568
2005	41 782	31 604	28 497	9 707	12 079	4 117	904	1 428	130 120
2006	44 229	32 158	28 422	10 463	12 455	4 417	967	1 351	134 464
2007	48 472	36 074	31 614	10 571	13 762	4 608	956	1 680	147 737
2008	44 262	34 592	28 558	9 571	12 140	4 170	940	1 410	135 642
(a) Australian residents aged 15 years and over.
(b) Components may not add to total as total includes unspecified and offshore visits that could not be allocated to a state or territory.
Source: ABS Tourism Research Australia, 2009, Travel by Australians, December quarter 2008, Tourism Australia, Canberra.

In 2008, 52% of day trips were for holiday/leisure purposes, 29% were to visit friends and/or relatives and 10% were for business purposes (graph 23.14).

In 2008, New South Wales received the most day visitors (33%), followed by Victoria (26%) and Queensland (21%) (graph 23.15).

Visitor nights

Domestic overnight travel involves a stay away from home for at least one night, at a place at least 40 kilometres from home. A person is an overnight visitor to a location if they stay one or more nights in the location while travelling.

Australians spent 272 million nights away from home during 2008 (table 23.16), a decrease of 6% compared with 2007.

23.16 VISITOR NIGHTS(a), By state/territory visited
	NSW	Vic.	Qld	SA	WA	Tas.	NT	ACT	Aust.(b)
	’000	’000	’000	’000	’000	’000	’000	’000	’000
2004	89 179	54 872	78 196	21 680	31 002	10 263	6 522	5 107	296 877
2005	82 450	51 119	74 872	18 653	28 422	8 550	6 329	5 400	275 859
2006	86 197	53 452	75 210	19 075	29 671	9 434	6 877	5 612	285 661
2007	83 176	53 244	77 069	19 107	32 684	10 219	7 159	5 844	288 603
2008	81 644	52 070	72 187	18 654	26 914	8 433	6 579	5 222	271 778
(a) Australian residents aged 15 years and over.
(b) Total includes unspecified and offshore visits that could not be allocated to a state or territory.
Source: ABS Tourism Research Australia, 2009, Travel by Australians, December quarter 2008, Tourism Australia, Canberra.

Overnight travellers who had holiday or leisure as their main purpose of visit accounted for the majority of domestic visitor nights in 2008 (49%), followed by those travelling to visit friends and/or relatives (31%) and for business purposes (15%) (graph 23.17).

In 2008, overnight visitors spent the highest proportion of nights in New South Wales (30%), followed by Queensland (27%) and Victoria (19%) (graph 23.18).

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