Cricket boosts tourism – but SA numbers still lag
The number of nights international visitors spend in Adelaide has continued to drop, despite a boost earlier this year from the Cricket World Cup.
Latest figures released by Tourism Research Australia (TRA) show that while the number of overseas visitors to the city increased in the March quarter – 115,000 compared with 109,000 the previous quarter – the number of nights they stayed fell by 2.7 per cent.
Results are worse for the year ending March, and seem to confirm a trend of shorter stays.
International visitor numbers for all of South Australia (Adelaide plus the regions) were down around 1 per cent, to 381,000, compared with the previous year, while international visitor nights fell 8 per cent and spending dropped 7 per cent to $690 million. As the table below shows, every other state enjoyed an increase in visitor spend.
However, Tourism Minister Leon Bignell – who has been under fire over his own travel expenses – used the cricket to put a positive spin on the International Visitor Survey, pointing out that South Australia attracted a record 17,000 visitors from India in the year ended March 2015.
“The State Government capitalised on the chance to host four matches during the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup and intentionally targeted the India versus Pakistan game,” he said in a statement.
TRA said India accounted for the largest growth in international tourism across the country during the year ending March 2015, thanks largely to the Cricket World Cup held during February and March.
Nationally, TRA said there was an increase of 8 per cent in the number of international visitors to Australia and they spent a record $32.5 billion in the year ending March 2015 – 10 per cent more than the previous year.
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China continued to the lead growth across the top five international markets and now accounts for 20 per cent of all trip spend by visitors to Australia, up from 7 per cent 10 years ago. Visitors to Australia from the United States, Singapore and New Zealand also increased, but results for the United Kingdom were unchanged.
Minister Bignell noted that visitor numbers from China to South Australia were up 24.2 per cent, to 33,000.
