Australia has registered significant growth in the number of Indian tourists coming in, and one of the reasons behind this trend is apparently the growing Indian diaspora in the country.
A large number of Indian visitors—57% according to the latest figures released by Austrade’s International Visitor Survey—are coming to Australia to meet friends and relatives and are thus spending more time and money in Australia. The survey also found that visitors from India jumped 15% to 343,000 and the spending was up 12% to $1.7 billion.
An earlier report from Tourism Research Australia between 2000 and 2015, outbound tourism grew more than four-fold to 21.8 million departures. Australia attracted a disproportionate share of these travellers, with six-fold growth in Indian visitor arrivals over the same period. Future prospects are strong too suggests the report. The United Nations World Tourism Organisation predicts that by 2020, there will be around 35 million outbound departures from India—that is an average annual growth rate of 12% between 2015–20.
India’s active working age population—the number of people aged 15-54 years—is the largest cohort and formed around half of the total Indian population in 2011. This cohort is expected to be a strong driver of future growth in outbound tourism, and is forecast to reach 904 million by 2031 (or up 213 million people on 2011).
The survey also reveals the Indian tourists are spending way more time on their holiday in Australia compared to tourists from other countries.
Compared to the overall average of 32 nights, the Indian tourists spent 61 nights on an average in Australia.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) recently stated there were 592,000 Indians living in Australia as of June 2018, which implies a 30% jump compared to Census 2016 figures which recorded 455,389 Indians living in Australia. India has been Australia’s biggest source of migrants since 2016 and more than 70,000 international students are studying in Australian universities.
More results from the survey
- China remains Australia’s leading tourism market during the year ending March 2019, with numbers increasing by 3% to 1.3 million visitors, while trip spend increased 10% to reach $12 billion, an additional $1.1 billion.
- Visitor numbers from New Zealand increased by 2% during the year to reach 1.3 million. Trip spend also increased 2% to reach $2.6 billion.
- Visitation from the UK was soft, down 4% to 673,000 visitors, with nights down 6% to 21.4 million, and trip spend down 5% to $3.3 billion.
- US visitation returned mixed results. Visitor numbers remained steady at 750,000, while nights fell by 8% to 13.1 million, and trip spend increased 6% to reach $4 billion, which suggests a better result for high yield visitors.
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