Minister Barr: Australian travellers continue to choose Canberra
- Written by ACT Government
Released 22/12/2016
Overnight interstate visitors to the ACT increased by more than 223,000 in the past year, continuing the trend of strong visitor numbers to the capital.
The ACT attracted 2.35 million overnight interstate visitors, up from around 2.13 million in 2015.
During this time, domestic visitors spent 6.12 million nights in the capital and contributed $1.34 billion in overnight expenditure, according to Tourism Research Australia’s latest National Visitor Survey.
Increases in leisure and business travellers contributed to the overall growth in domestic overnight visitation.
These are great results for Canberra – particularly when combined with the record 206,915 international visitors recently reported in Tourism Research Australia’s International Visitor Survey.
I look forward to seeing our domestic visitor numbers continue to rise following the commencement of Tigerair’s highly-anticipated new route between Canberra and Melbourne earlier this month.
Tigerair’s new daily service between Canberra and Melbourne provides an additional 2,500 visitor seats per week through Canberra Airport, with the potential to inject $17 million into the Canberra economy each year.
I look forward to witnessing the positive impacts that these flights will have on our city’s growing tourism industry as we work towards growing the value of the ACT’s overnight visitor expenditure to $2.5 billion by 2020.
- Statement ends -
Section: Andrew Barr, MLA | Media Releases
