This compares to a spend during 2024 of $19.6 billion, suggesting a spending drop of $2.4 billion or a little over 12 per cent.
This reduction in delegate spend sits alongside a rise in delegate numbers overall, up from roughly 19,769,000 in 2024 to roughly 20,676,000 in 2025.
Digging further into the results, the spend and visitation changes lie primarily in domestic travellers, with a significant drop in overnight business events travellers and an even more significant rise in daytrippers attending business events.
There are two reasons for this.
At the start of 2025, there was a methodology change in how domestic tourism statistics are gathered by Tourism Research Australia, with mobility data used for the first time, alongside survey results, which will have captured more daytrippers.
Tourism Research Australia says caution should be exercised in comparing results between the two years due to the methodology change and backcasting of 2024 figures.
However, micenet also spoke to Tourism Research Australia, who confirmed that alongside the impact of the change in methodology, there has been a broader real trend towards more day trips and fewer overnight stays for both domestic business events and leisure travellers.
It is worth noting that domestic leisure statistics – also impacted by the methodology change – showed a much less pronounced drop in domestic overnight spending, at just two per cent for 2025 compared to 2024, in contrast to a 25 per cent drop in domestic overnight spending for business events between 2024 and 2025.
International business events figures for which there has been no methodology change, have seen broadly consistent results between 2024 and 2025. There has been a small drop in the number international business events attendees – down from 783,000 in 2024 to 731,000 in 2025, with a spend impact of approximately $200 million. Interestingly, a larger proportion of international delegates stayed in Australia longer than seven days in 2025 compared to 2024, while a smaller portion stayed just two days.
“From an international perspective, there has been year-on-year expenditure growth for key inbound markets including [the] UK (up 18 per cent YOY), New Zealand (up 14 per cent YOY) and India (up 12 per cent YOY),” notes Australian Business Events Association (ABEA) CEO, Melissa Brown.
“Plus, business events expenditure from China delegates continues to build – the market has delivered 24 per cent growth over the period, securing more than $500 million in total trip expenditure.
“International business events visitors are also visiting destinations beyond Australia’s key gateways, with 50 per cent visiting more than one destination overnight, and nearly 20 per cent of international BE trip expenditure spent in regional destinations of Australia.”
Brown also suggested a number of reasons for the rising daytripper trend amongst domestic business events delegates.
“This could be due to many factors, including the increase in business events available to delegates in Australia, the cost of business pressures allowing staff to be out of the office for one day only and more local events closer to delegates’ homes.”
