One Million Visitors This Year

24 June 2009

Tasmania has reached the historic milestone of one million visitors in a single year.

This landmark achievement followed the release of visitor figures for the 2008-09 cruise ship season.

Achieving one million visitors in a year is great news for tourism in Tasmania. It marks the achievement of a major goal set out in Tourism 21 – the joint Tasmanian Government and tourism industry three-year business plan.

The milestone of one million visitors follows last week’s announcement that Tasmania had posted a third consecutive quarter of visitation growth.

The March 2009 results of the Tasmanian Visitor Survey (TVS) showed Tasmania was continuing to defy the national trend of a deteriorating domestic travel climate. According to the TVS, visitor numbers to Tasmania increased by seven per cent to 896,800 in the 12 months to March 2009.

Add to this the 2008-09 cruise season figures and the visits from navy ships and the total visitation for the year is just over one million people.

From November 2008 to March 2009 Tasmania welcomed 102,400 cruise ship visitors to the State – an increase of 27 per cent on the previous season. Additionally, there were 4,300 navy ship visitors in the year to March 2009.

Tasmania’s cruise ship market has experienced striking growth over the past decade. The numbers of cruise ship visitors to our State has increased 600 per cent from the 16,400 people that visited on cruises ships in 1997-98.

Cruise ship visitors now represent approximately 11 per cent of all visitors to Tasmania.

During the 2008-09 season Tasmania welcomed 66 separate cruise ship visits by 21 different vessels; four more vessels and 16 more visits than the 2007-08 cruise ship season.

Importantly, cruise ship visitors are also spending more while they are here. During the 2008-09 season an estimated $11.3 million was spent by cruise ship visitors in the State, which represents a 27 per cent or $2.4 million increase on the 2007-08 season.

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