Overseas Arrivals & Departures data from ABS this week. Commentary:

International arrivals still growing; QLD gets its mojo back while Tassie slows

Qld “gets its mojo back” on international visitors

Tourism is still booming, but not just from China

Again, more questions than answers. While annual short term visitor growth to Australia remains positive the growth from China has slowed significantly while the holiday category has flattened and turned slightly negative on rolling annual growth, down 1.9% on the previous year.

All categories rolling annual growth for major states with WA at the bottom omitted from the legend:

This is curious because the holiday category is the strength of Queensland. Perhaps Queensland really is shooting the lights out on international holiday visitor share. It could be that the growth shift from China to the USA is more advantageous to the Queensland holiday product. Perhaps a Commonwealth Games effect has shown up.

The most interesting aspect here is that it was the purpose of visit data that was the problem for the International Visitor Survey and was withheld from the most recent edition. Since delayed again. TRA specifically cited the quality of the arrival card data. I can find nothing at ABS which indicates any problem with this data which is derived from the same source.

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