Why the world loves Australia: what's behind the 50% jump in visitor numbers?

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There has been a boom in the number of people travelling to Australia, with arrivals surging more than 50 per cent in just six years, according to statistics from Tourism Research Australia (TRA).

In 2011, just 5.3 million international visitors flew to the Land Down Under, a number that by 2017 had grown to an impressive 8.1 million overseas travellers.

Famed for its spectacular natural landscapes, Australia is so vast its longest internal flight time is an impressive five hours and 15 minutes. It can be quicker to get from New York to London than from Broome to Sydney on flagship airline Qantas.

But despite its size, almost 50 per cent of all of international visitors make a beeline straight for the famous harbour city of Sydney, followed by Melbourne (34 per cent) and Brisbane (16 per cent) – the gateway to the north and the spectacular Great Barrier Reef.

So what’s behind this incredible boom in tourism? It appears in part to be a result of the rise of the of the Chinese traveller. Residents of the Asian country have caught the travel bug, with a staggering 1,380 per cent rise in overseas trips since the millennium.

When breaking down the statistics to see where travellers are flocking from, China has equalled neighbouring New Zealand, who have long held the crown as the greatest lovers of Australia. Each of the countries accounted for 15.4 per cent of Australia’s international tourism statistics, followed by the USA (8.9 per cent) and the UK (7.9 per cent).

Year-on-year increases also provide some surprising insight into the nation's visitor statistics. The number of travellers arriving from New Zealand increased by just 1 per cent from 2016 to 2017, 2.4 per cent from the UK and 12.2 per cent from China. But it's India that takes the crown as the most recent nation to fall in love with the varied landscapes of Australia, with an impressive 15.4 per cent increase in travellers.

Lucia Widdop, form Austravel, a specialist in tailor-made holidays to Australia, elaborated. “What is behind this growth? In a word? Asia," she said. "Only this week, Australia's Bureau of Statistics reported that the country saw a record number of Chinese tourists – just under 1.4 million – in the year to February 2018. This means that Chinese tourists now outnumber New Zealand tourists - who had long been Australia's biggest tourist nation.