Amidst sluggish economy, Australia has recorded the highest number of short-term visitors in a year ever, thanks to Indian tourists who registered a strong growth of over 11 per cent.
In 2018-19, more than 9.3 million short-term visitors arrived in Australia from overseas, the highest year on record, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) revealed on Wednesday.
Indian visitors emerged as the fastest-growing group in 2018-19 while China, the largest source of tourists with over 1.4 million visitors, showed signs of a slowing down, the data revealed.
More than 372,000 Indian visitors arrived in Australia – registering the highest growth of over 11 per cent, followed closely by Japan that registered a growth of 9.5 per cent, compared to 2017-18.
Most numbers of visitors from India arrived in the month of March (40,600), December (39,300) and June (34,300) in 2018-19.
Summer and autumn saw a steady stream of visitors from India with the numbers reducing from July to November (2018).
The recent Austrade's International Visitor Survey revealed Indian visitors’ spending was up by 12 per cent to $1.7 billion with average spending of $4933 per trip.
Source: Supplied
The Indian tourists were also spending way more time on their holiday in Australia compared to tourists from other countries with 61 nights on an average.
The survey stated this was mostly because most tourists (57%) were typically here for visiting friends and relatives.
Melbourne attracted most Indian visitors at 165,513 with Sydney coming a close second with 154,435 Indian visitors.
Within India, Maharashtra was the top source of visitors with Delhi and Karnataka coming in second and third. Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat took up the fourth, fifth and sixth spots respectively.
Tourism Australia hopes to grow this market to $1.9 bn to $2.3 bn by 2020.
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics Source: Tourism Australia
The Indian population in Australia has exponentially grown in the last five years.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) recently stated there were 592,000 Indians living in Australia as of June 2018. This is a 30 per cent jump compared to Census 2016 figures which recorded 455,389 Indians living in Australia.
India has been Australia’s biggest source of migrants since 2016 and more than 70,000 international students are studying in Australian universities.
