The National Survey and Data Science section in TRA manages survey design and management. We work with consultants, stakeholders and industry. This develops and maintains high data quality and relevant outputs.
The IVS has been surveying international visitors in 4 languages since 2004. These are English, Japanese, Mandarin and Korean. We distribute surveys among airports by selecting monthly samples of departing flights and visitors. This ensures we achieve adequate samples sizes in a range of categories.
We weigh the survey results to Department of Home Affairs’ data on international visitor numbers. The variables used in weighting the data are:
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) publishes overseas (visitor) Arrivals and Departures (OAD) data (ABS catalogue no. 3401.0) each month.
We base the results in the IVS on a sample, rather than a census, of international visitors to Australia. The results are subject to sampling variability. Note: If we included all international visitors to Australia in the survey, the resulting data might be different.
The relative standard error of the survey and its associated confidence interval indicate the extent to which an estimate might vary by chance from the true number. This is because we only include a sample of the population.
The table below presents the 95% confidence intervals for a range of estimates available in the IVS. There are about 19 chances in 20 that the true number is in the range identified by applying the figures in the table.
Expressed as a percentage of the estimate.
| Estimate | Visits | Nights | Expenditure |
| 2,000 | 64.40% | # | # |
| 5,000 | 41.50% | # | # |
| 10,000 | 29.80% | # | # |
| 20,000 | 21.40% | # | # |
| 50,000 | 13.80% | # | # |
| 100,000 | 9.90% | 75.70% | # |
| 200,000 | 7.10% | 55.40% | # |
| 500,000 | 4.60% | 36.70% | # |
| 1,000,000 | 3.30% | 26.90% | # |
| 2,000,000 | 2.40% | 19.70% | # |
| 5,000,000 | 1.50% | 13.10% | 97.60% |
| 10,000,000 | 1.10% | 9.60% | 72.80% |
| 20,000,000 | 7.00% | 54.30% | |
| 50,000,000 | 4.60% | 36.80% | |
| 100,000,000 | 3.40% | 27.40% | |
| 200,000,000 | 2.50% | 20.50% | |
| 500,000,000 | 1.70% | 13.90% | |
| 1,000,000,000 | 1.20% | 10.30% | |
| 2,000,000,000 | 0.90% | 7.70% | |
| 5,000,000,000 | 0.60% | 5.20% | |
| 10,000,000,000 | 0.40% | 3.90% |
# 95% confidence interval is greater than estimate.
For example, say the estimated number of Chinese visitors who stayed in Queensland was 100,000. Looking at the visits column in the table, an estimate of 100,000 visitors has a 95% confidence interval of 9.9%. We are 95% confident that the true number of Chinese visitors who stayed in Queensland was between 90,100 and 109,900 visitors (100,000 ± 9.9%).
We:
The actual relationship modelled was:
The model parameters were approximated as:
| Visits | Nights | Expenditure |
| a. 2.521841 | 4.218551 | 5.837435b |
| b. -0.47831 | -0.44906 | -0.42362 |
In the March quarter 2024 release we introduced the Philippines and Vietnam as benchmarked markets. Historically these markets were represented in the ‘Other Asia’ market group.
The change has been back cast from December 2023 to January 2023 resulting in small revisions to the time series during this period.
The Other Asia market estimates before the change are no longer comparable.
We:
We imputed IVS estimates from the March quarter 2020 to June quarter 2022. This was due to COVID-19 related international border closures and insufficient sample size of interviews. Data for country, main reason for visit, and state stopover will be valid at the aggregated level. As imputation was applied at an aggregate level, granular disaggregations or cross classifications of the data during this period are not available.
Due to revisions to OAD data, we revised estimates for:
From April 2020 to February 2022 the OAD used a full count (rather than sample) of passenger cards. This was used to measure short-term visitor arrivals to Australia due to the small number of visitor movements occurring. We used more complete OAD data for IVS imputation purposes.
IVS interviewing:
Due to COVID-19 there was no IVS interviewing from 1 April 2020. As a result, we imputed some estimates for the period from 1 April 2020.
TRA used trip characteristics from relevant past IVS records with the same profile to visitors in the OAD. We imputed values for a range of visitor characteristics for the period from 1 April 2020.
Spend values have been sensitivity checked against domestic spend behaviours by item. This is to ensure alignment with current spending patterns.
Due to revisions to OAD data, TRA revised IVS estimates from 2005 to 2018 with the release of year ending December 2018 data. The revisions focus on purpose-of-visit estimates, with minimal change to visitor, nights and spend estimates.
We conducted interviews between 2001 and 2004 with approximately 20,000 international visitors. Since 1 January 2005 we conducted interviews with 40,000 international visitors on an annual basis. We increased the sample size to enhance the estimates for smaller states, territories and regions. Increasing the sample size of the IVS by 100% has improved the reliability of survey estimates.