The Australian tourism sector has received an early Christmas present with today’s ABS Overseas Arrivals Data showing the number of people travelling to Australia in the past 12 months is at an all-time high, the Tourism & Transport Forum Australia (TTF) said today.

TTF Chief Executive Margy Osmond said that a record 8.68 million people visited Australia in the year to September 2017, an increase of 7.4 per cent on the previous year.

“The Australian tourism industry continues its record breaking run of international visitor arrivals, confirming its importance as our next super-growth sector,” Ms Osmond said.

“While the rise and rise of Chinese visitors sees China now a whisker behind New Zealand as our largest single visitor source market, the incredible resurgence of the USA visitor market continues to shake up the tourism sector.

“While China is leading the charge with an extra 141,500 visitors in the past year, there continues to be solid growth across Asia with double-digit growth in a number of Asian countries including India with a whopping 15.3 per cent increase and Hong Kong with a very healthy 13.3 per cent.”

Ms Osmond said that while the latest figures were fantastic news for Australia’s booming visitor economy, it would be a mistake to remain complacent with the 7.4 per cent increase in the total number of visitors the slowest annual growth rate since late 2015.

“While there is much to celebrate in the news we welcomed 8.68 million overseas visitors in the year to September 2017, we cannot afford to take this growth for granted and must continue to invest in measures such as destination marketing to ensure that our tourism sector continues its current golden run well into the future,” Ms Osmond said.