Tourist numbers from China are surging back but overall Australia’s international tourism numbers are staying below pre-COVID levels.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, released today, show that short-term overseas visitor arrivals were at 755,000 in August this year, compared with 789,200 in 2019.
Chinese short-term visitors jumped from 78,550 in August, 2024 to 106,990 in the same month this year.
This was still well short of the 128,280 figure in 2019.
Visitors from New Zealand, which is the biggest tourist market to Australia, are trending down.
At 110,210, the monthly figure was below the 114,660 recorded in 2025 and well off the 124,710 in 2019.
Japanese monthly tourism has climbed from 54,420 in 2024 to 62,600 in August this year, just a slither shy of the 2019 figure of 63,070.
South Korea is the only major market to record an increase on its 2019 figures. August numbers from there are up from 20,960 in 2019 to 30,990 now.
Tourism from the USA is roughly in line with the 2019 numbers, as is the UK, India and Singapore.
Malaysian numbers fell from 46,630 to 26,470 over the seven years.
Full report is here
