Year ending March 2021

Coronavirus (COVID-19) has had a large impact on international travel to Australia in the past year. Our data shows the effects of this on Australia’s tourism industry.

You can:

  • read about the factors influencing international travel to Australia.
  • see the changes compared over the various timeframes impacted by bushfires and Coronavirus (COVID-19).


Quarterly snapshot


International visitor spend

Year ending March 2021 | $794 million | Down 98.1%


International visitors

Year ending March 2021 | 60,212 | Down 99.3%


Visitor nights

Year ending March 2021 | 6.2 million | Down 97.6%

Key results

Key results for the year ending March 2021 include:

  • international visitor numbers fell by 99.3% to 60,212
  • international visitor spend was down 98.1% to $794 million
  • visitor nights were down 97.6% to 6.2 million.

Total international and domestic tourism losses for the year ending March 2021 reached $82.9 billion.

International tourism saw losses of $40.7 billion overall for the year ending March 2021. This was due to international border closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the same period, there were further losses of:

  • $33.1 billion from domestic overnight travel
  • $9.1 billion from domestic day travel.

Australia’s top 5 markets

Australia’s top 5 international visitor markets saw significant losses:

  • Chinese visitor numbers fell 99.8%. This was a loss of 1.1 million visitors. Spend fell 99.4% or $10.1 billion.
  • New Zealand visitor numbers fell 98.9%. This was a loss of 1.2 million visitors. Spend fell 95.4% or $2.4 billion.
  • The United States of America visitor numbers fell 99.0%. This was a loss of 707,000 visitors. Spend fell 96.9% or $3.6 billion.
  • United Kingdom visitor numbers fell 99.1%. This was a loss of 631,000 visitors. Spend fell 97.1% or $3.1 billion.
  • Japanese visitor numbers fell 99.8%. This was a loss of 424,000 visitors. Spend fell 99.6% or $2.0 billion. 

Data tables

Contact TRA

mail   tourism.research@tra.gov.au