NSW has broken records with the latest round of National Visitor Survey results revealing in the year ending June 2018, 32.9 million domestic visitors (+9.3%) stayed 103.3 million nights (+6.7%) and spent $19.8 billion (+15.2%).

The impressive growth in spend (+15.2%) was almost double NSW’s nearest contender, Victoria (+8.0%). NSW leads Victoria by 8.3 million visitors, 31.7 million nights and $5.9 billion expenditure. Queensland was the third best performer however, NSW still led its northern rival by 10.5 million visitors, 13 million nights and $2.8 billion in expenditure.

Minister for Tourism and Major Events Adam Marshall said visitors were not just coming to see Sydney, but more and more people were travelling to rural and regional towns to experience the State’s renowned hospitality and attractions.

“These results are the highest on record and show the work the NSW Government is doing in delivering results for the tourism industry which directly employs more than 171,000 people in our State,” Mr Marshall said.

“I’m very proud that rural and regional NSW leads regional Australia in domestic visitors and has achieved its highest number of domestic visitors, nights and expenditure on record.

“The NSW Government has set the State’s first regional tourism target of $25 billion in visitor expenditure in rural and regional NSW by 2030, so that every corner of NSW gets its fair share of the record tourist dollars.”

The North Coast (+8%), Hunter (+13%), Central NSW (+15%) and Capital Country (+21%) regions all posted significant visitor growth and across regional NSW overall visitor numbers grew by 9 per cent.

Both Intrastate and Interstate visitor numbers to NSW were up 1.5 million and up 1.3 million, respectively.

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