Thursday, 4 October 2018
Northern Tablelands MP and Minister for Tourism and Major Events Adam Marshall says the region continues to boast an impressive number of tourists flocking to town.
According to the latest National Visitor Statistics YE June 2018, 1.6 million domestic tourists visited to the New England North West (up 4.2 per cent) stayed 4.6 million nights (up 8.9 per cent) and spent over $636 million in visitor expenditure (up 19.5 per cent).
“We’re seeing expediential tourism growth in our region each year, and these record results are truly a feather in our cap,” Mr Marshall said.
“A healthy visitor economy is vital for our local economies, instilling business confidence, encouraging investment and generating jobs.
“I want to ensure our community continues to thrive and that means continuing to encourage more people to visit our beautiful region – putting more heads on beds, diners in our restaurants, shoppers in our boutiques and visitors on our tours.”
Mr Marshall said NSW was miles ahead of the rest of the country as the number one destination choice for travellers.
“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%),” Mr Marshall said.
“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.
“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 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.