Tourism Western Australia (WA) reported (12-Dec-2017) international visitor spending for the year ending Sep-2017 declined 0.4% year-on-year. The number of international visitors to WA increased 2.8% over the same period. Tourism WA attributed the drop in overall spend, despite the increase in visitor numbers, to the type of visitor WA is attracting. The State is seeing more leisure visitors and less employment related visitors, most likely attributable to current economic conditions. Other key highlights include:
- Strong growth in visitor numbers from the US (up 19.7%), Malaysia (up 12.7%), China (up 17.3%) and Indonesia (up 12.8%), driven by growth from the leisure sector, which is made up of the holiday and visiting friends and relatives segments;
- Notable declines were seen in the number of visitors from New Zealand (down 13.7%) and the UK (down 4.5%);
- WA also experienced a drop in the number of visitor nights, down 5.1% to 27.3 million;
- The VFR segment was up 2.5% to 403,100 visitors but behind national growth of 7.2%;
- International visitor numbers in the education segment increased 7.6% to 49,200 visitors, lower than the average national growth of 14.4%;
- The business segment remained stable with 0.8% growth to 101,100 visitors. [more - original PR]