Our Industry

To understand the role we play, it is important to understand who our visitors are and where they come from.

This section is about NSW’s tourism industry, including general facts and figures, background on the government departments and agencies involved in supporting and developing tourism businesses, and information on the industry associations, partners and organisations that we work with. Click here for Industry Contacts.

Tourists from within Australia account for around 96% of our market, with the majority of these coming from within NSW. Interstate visitors come mainly from Victoria (12%) and Queensland (11%).

The international market is smaller, but brings tourists who stay longer and spend more in NSW. Domestic overnight tourists and domestic daytrip tourists have a higher average night spend than international tourists.

The state’s largest international markets have been:

the United Kingdom (approx 14%)
New Zealand (approx 13%)
China (12%)
United States of America (approx 10%)

We are planning for, and seeing, extraordinary growth in visitor numbers and associated spending from the developing markets of China and India. Over the 2008-18 period the Tourism Forecasting Council expects inbound tourism from China to Australia increase at an annual average growth rate of 10.3% while Indian tourists are expected to increase at an annual average growth rate of 14.8% - the highest of all inbound markets.

International visitors to Australia are expected to increase at an average annual rate of 4.0% over the 2008-18 period to reach 8.2 million in 2018.

Our focus is not only on increasing the volume of overseas visitors, but also attracting visitors from within those international markets who will spend the most money here.

The primary responsibility for the attraction of international visitors to Australia rests with the Commonwealth Government through Tourism Australia.

Our main emphasis is on the domestic tourism market within Australia and this is where we devote most of our resources. We allocate resources to highly targeted international activity in partnership with Tourism Australia, to make sure we fight for our share of the high returns from the growing international market.

Source: TFC Issue 1 2009 and National & International Visitor Survey year ending March 2009