While data from the government body put spending through 2023 by domestic and international travellers combined at $20.9 billion, in the year to June 2024, that figure has fallen to $19.8 billion.
Spend by international business events visitors has only fallen slightly, compared to six months ago, dropping from $2.6 billion to $2.5 billion.
The overall number of business events travellers is also down, by 795,000, although the fall is in domestic travellers, with international business events visitors rising, from 742,000 in the year to March to 770,000 in the year to June 2024.
The number of international business events travellers coming to Australia is now at 76 per cent of pre-COVID numbers.
“Most of the change we are seeing is domestic related as we are seeing a softer market for visitation in general,” said Australian Business Events Association (ABEA) CEO, Melissa Brown.
“This could be due to a number of reasons, but the cost of living and inflation pressures are evident.
“In relation to the international visitations, the decline is mostly related to the cost of airfares, which is influenced by which markets visitors are coming from i.e. the further away they are the more spent on airfares,” she said.
New Zealand remains Australia’s top source market for international delegates, with the United States of America coming in second, China third and the United Kingdom fourth. Singapore, India, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea and Vietnam made up the rest of the top 10, in that order.
In terms of event venues, international delegates are more likely to end up in a convention centre or hotel – with 76 per cent attending these venues, while only 57 per cent of domestic overnight business events travellers are using these venues, with larger numbers of this cohort going to universities or company headquarters to meet.
The new figures come from a business events data set that was launched by Tourism Research Australia earlier this year, following $2 million in federal government funding. ABEA assisted with the new data dashboard, alongside the wider industry.
Looking at Australia’s broader visitor economy statistics, released alongside the business events numbers this week, the recovery of international visitation has inched forwards, with visitor numbers now at 85 per cent of June 2019 levels, where in March they were at 84 per cent of levels from the same period to March 2019.
Spend by international travellers now is higher than 2019, inching up another couple of per cent on the figures from three months ago – spend across all visitors is now three per cent above 2019 levels, where in March it was one per cent above 2019 levels.
The spend by international visitors to Australia over the year to June 2024 was $31.7 billion, up by $800 million compared to the year to March 2024.
Overall, in the year to June, there were 7.4 million international travellers to Australia, who spent 278.2 million nights here.
The top five international source markets for international visitation to Australia are New Zealand, China, the USA, the UK and India, with India being the only one of these markets where visitor numbers now exceed those arriving pre-pandemic. Notably, Chinese visitors, despite rising to be Australia’s second largest single market, have still only recovered to 56 per cent of pre-COVID travellers.
