The latest National Visitor Survey was out yesterday which wasn’t positive in the Far North as posted at Conus: Domestic tourism continues to dive in TNQ

The Cairns Post has reported a defensive response from Alex de Waal at TTNQ: Tourism Tropical North Queensland refutes falling domestic visitor claim

Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive officer Alex de Waal pointed to a disclaimer on the report telling readers to treat the results with caution due to “some unexpectedly high growth rates” in recent quarters.

“We’re at odds with these statistics. We’re doing further research into it at the moment. There’s lots of evidence contrary to what the (national visitor survey) statistics are indicating,” he said.

Cairns Airport’s records show domestic arrivals for 2016 were up by 208,130 to 4.2 million, a 5.2 per cent increase.

Skyrail managing director Craig Pocock refuted the survey results, noting a “very strong year domestically”.

“We’ve seen good growth from all states,” he said.

A Tourism Research Australia spokesman said the 2014 and 2015 figures were under review and were likely overestimated for the Far North.

“The issue in the (survey) referred to in our disclaimer does appear to have an effect in the case of Tropical North Queensland,” he said.

I did post a cynical response here to the previous NVS: Why I distrust National Visitor Survey data. Airport data is an incomplete comparison and domestic traffic also includes international passengers. However I would have thought there should be some observable correlation when there are very large or volatile movements.

What everyone seems to neglect when it comes to the NVS is that it is a telephone survey with a statistical margin of error regardless of any other issues. As we move down progressively from the national data to smaller subsets the margin increases. Details can be found here: National Visitor Survey Methodology

Uncategorized