In a statement released to the media today, Destination NSW has smashed records for visitation and total expenditure, racing to a new high of $52.9 billion in visitor expenditure.

Tourism Research Australia data for the previous financial year (ending June 2024) has revealed a remarkably successful year for local tourism, positioning NSW as Australia’s most successful state when it comes to international visitation, expenditure and overnight stays.

Both international visitor nights and expenditure have blown past pre-pandemic levels, resulting in a record $12.2 billion spent during the same period. Further to that, international visitor spending rose to $11.1 billion in Sydney and, notably, $1.2 billion in regional NSW.

Sydney was Australia’s top capital city for visitors, attracting the large majority of the 3.7 million visitors that visited the state with a total of 99.1 million nights stayed (in hotels or other forms of accommodation). That’s up 46.2% compared on 2019, resulting in a 41.9% increase in spending. Life’s good for NSW right now.

Now the kicker is that regional NSW welcomed 0.7 million international visitors staying a total of 17.1 million nights. While that’s on a clear upwards trajectory, it also means that there’s plenty of room for growth. That’s a significant incentive for more investment in tourism, which naturally necessitates more development to sustain such growth.

In total, there were 101.6 million domestic and international visitors to NSW in the previous financial year These metrics have long been used as a litmus test for the tourism industry, which drives investment and hence leads to a bigger, brighter economy.

“NSW continues to break its own records for visitor economy growth and Destination NSW has a laser focus on leveraging the state’s strengths to fast-track the return of international visitation to 2019 levels,” remarked Destination NSW CEO Steve Cox.

With our state leading Australia’s international visitor revival years after the pandemic, Destination NSW has every right to toot their own horn so the speak. We can only hope these numbers continue to leap up.

These are a few interesting insights

Looking at the numbers is impressive, but breaking them down is giving us a bit more insight into where people are going and what they’re engaging with throughout the state.

NSW welcomed 37.1 million domestic overnight visitors staying 117 million nights and spending $30.7 billion.
15.7 million of those visitors engaged in natured and outdoor based activities during their trip.
Western Sydney accounted for more than one in five domestic overnight visitors to Sydney, which is a substantial 20.3 per cent increase on last year.
A total of 801,900 international and domestic overnight visitors participated in an Aboriginal tourism experience in NSW. Those visitors stayed 20 million nights in the year ending June 2024, leading to an injection of $3.2 billion in visitor expenditure.
512,500 international visitors participated in an Aboriginal tourism experience across NSW, which is up 39.3 per cent on the same period in 2019. These visitors stayed 18.9 million nights, injecting $2.7 billion in visitor expenditure.

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