National Visitor Survey results December 2021

Year ending December 2021

The National Visitor Survey (NVS) results provide statistics on how Australian residents travel within Australia. You can find national, state and territory results for the:

• number of trips taken
• nights spent on a trip
• amount spent on a trip.

You can also:

• read about the factors influencing travel within Australia
• see the changes compared over various timeframes impacted by COVID-19.

The summary results for 2021 are compared to 2019 pre-COVID periods. This is because 2020 results were a large deviation from pre-pandemic levels.

Key results

Domestic trips and spend for year ending December 2021

For the year ending December 2021:

• Domestic overnight trips fell 30% to 82.1 million.
• Spend fell 25% or $19.9 billion to $60.7 billion.
• Travel restrictions had a greater impact on interstate movement:
  • Interstate trips were down 57% to 16.6 million. Spend was down 50% to $22.7 billion.
  • Intrastate trips were down 17% to 65.5 million. Spend was up 7% to $38.0 billion.
• Regional areas continued to fare slightly better than capital cities over the year:
  • Overnight trips to regional Australia were down 21% to 58.4 million. Spend was down 6% to $39.4 billion.
  • Capital city trips were down 45% to 26.9 million. Spend was down 45% to $21.4 billion.

Domestic trips and spend for December quarter 2021

For the December quarter 2021:

• Border restrictions and lockdowns due to the Delta and Omicron outbreaks continued to impact domestic tourism in the December quarter 2021:
  • Domestic overnight trips fell 28% to 21.1 million.
  • Spend fell 32% or $6.4 billion to $14.0 billion.
• High vaccination rates and the easing of restrictions led to improvements from the September quarter 2021. There was a 50% increase in spend and 78% increase in trips. This is in comparison to the pre-COVID 3-year average per cent change of:
  • -1% for spend
  • 6% for trips.

Total pandemic tourism losses

Domestic and international tourism losses have totalled $146.6 billion since the start of the pandemic. These losses include:

• $56.2 billion for domestic overnight travel
• $17.6 billion for domestic day trips
• $72.8 billion for international travel.

Download the report

Explore overnight trips data

Interact with our data for domestic overnight trips for year ending December 2021. You can view the data by:

• state or territory
• capital city or region
• interstate and intrastate trips
• accommodation type
• reason for travel.

Data tables

Read more

• Read the National Visitor Survey Methodology
  
• We produce a monthly snapshot of the National Visitor Survey