New IVS figures released today have shown that visitors from Canada and Japan are most likely to venture outside of the capital cities, when compared to average tourists with growth in both markets being beneficial to regional tourism across Australia.

Speaking about the figures released today, TTF Chief Executive Margy Osmond said “this is a great news story, and everyone involved should take some time to soak up the results.”

“The data is telling us that Japan’s love-affair with Australia is growing stronger and that they are keen to travel outside the capital cities to really explore our great country.”

Across the country the Japanese market showed impressive growth up by 9% to 445,000 visitors as the market returns to stronger levels.

NSW showed significant gains from the markets of the United States and Japan with 522,000 US visitors in the year ending June 2019 who generated $853 million in tourism spend (up 18 per cent) and 205,000 Japanese visitors who generated $402 million for the State.

Japan has now surpassed Korea in the State’s top five source markets, joining China, US, New Zealand and United Kingdom.

The ACT has led the country in terms of international visitor growth while Queensland visitors are spent up big with a record 28 million domestic and international tourists spent more than ever before.

“Nationally we have seen visitation up by 3% and spending up by 5% which is a great outcome,” Ms Osmond said.

“However, promoting tourism is and always will be an ongoing process and we need to keep our foot on the pedal, we all have a role to play in this game,” Ms Osmond said.

“While several of our key markets including China, New Zealand and the US are very important to the visitor economy, we need to ensure we keep working to be attractive to a broad range of international markets”.