Minister Barr: Record number of international visitors come to CBR
- Written by ACT Government
Released 03/03/2016
The ACT has attracted a record number of international visitors for the year ending December 2015, with 195,118 travellers making their way to the capital from overseas.
These are fantastic results, further highlighting the potential for Canberra and the region to grow our international leisure, education and business tourism markets when Singapore Airlines’ direct international flights commence in mid-September.
The ACT Government has been working hard to attract more visitors to the capital, and we recently announced our new global marketing positioning - One Good Thing After Another.
According to figures released in Tourism Research Australia’s International Visitor Survey (IVS), Canberra’s international visitor numbers increased by 10.5 per cent on 2014, which is ahead of the 7.9 per cent national average. Growth across the holiday, business, education and employment sectors can be credited for this increase.
International visitor nights also grew to a record 5.1 million for the year ending December 2015, representing an increase of 12.2 per cent, slightly higher than the national average of 11.3 per cent.
Visitors are also staying longer in the nation’s capital at 26.1 nights – up 1.6 per cent on last year’s figures – and spending more. The survey indicated that our international visitors spent a total of $394 million in Canberra, $26 million more than the previous year.
China remains the ACT’s largest international visitor market, recording an increase of 12.1 per cent, while strong growth was also experienced in visitors from the United States of America (35.0 per cent) and New Zealand (25.8 per cent).
I look forward to witnessing the positive benefits that international connectivity will have on our city as we work towards growing the value of the visitor economy to $2.5 billion by 2020.
- Statement ends -
Section: Andrew Barr, MLA | Media Releases
