Tourism and transport

In September 2024:

• Short-term visitor arrivals: 630,700 – an increase of 7.9% on one year earlier
• Short-term resident returns: 1,020,960 – an increase of 8.7% on one year earlier
• Total arrivals: 1,733,340 – an increase of 8.1% on one year earlier
• Total departures: 1,796,550 – an increase of 13.0% on one year earlier

• The average number of motor vehicles per household is 1.8.

• 673,969 households don’t have a motor vehicle, primarily amongst lone households.

• 91 per cent of households (91.3 per cent) reported having at least one vehicle and more than half (55.1 per cent) reported having two or more vehicles.

• Cars continued to be the most popular mode of transport to get to work in every state and territory. 52.7 per cent (6,347,498 people) of the Australian workforce drove to work by car only, compared to 61.5 per cent (6,574,571 people) in 2016. 

• Using trains as the sole mode of transport to get to work decreased from 488,012 in 2016 to 170,326 in 2021. 

• 2.5 per cent of people (306,045) walked to work. Northern Territory had the highest proportion of people who walked to work at 7.6 per cent (8,115 people).

• Of the 12 million people employed on Census day, 2.5 million people (21.0 per cent) worked from home, compared to 500,000 (4.7 per cent) in 2016. 1.4 million people (11.8 per cent) didn’t go to work on Census day, compared to 1 million people (9.4 per cent) in 2016.

Provisional estimates of overseas trips in June 2021 show:

• A total of 103,500 arrivals
• 40,500 Australian citizens arrivals (39%), 9,100 permanent visa holders (9%), 43,800 New Zealand citizens (42%) and 10,900 temporary visa holders (11%)
• A total of 99,500 departures

• There were 20.1 million registered motor vehicles as at 31 January 2021.
• The national fleet increased by 1.7% from 2020 to 2021.
• Toyota topped the list of passenger vehicles for the 16th consecutive year with 3.0 million registrations.
• Diesel vehicles increased to 26.4% of the national fleet, up from 20.9% in 2016.

• 19,768,518 estimated number of vehicles
• 238,499 million kilometres travelled, an average of 12.1 thousand kilometres per vehicle
• 33,019 megalitres of fuel consumed
• 223,949 million tonne-kilometres of freight moved

Contains monthly information on sales of new motor vehicles in each state/territory sourced from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries

This release contains information on the supply of, and demand for, tourist accommodation facilities

Information on the supply and demand for tourist accommodation facilities including number of establishments and occupancy by type and star rating