Tasmania’s tourism industry is smashing records for visitor numbers.
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New statistics show 1.26 million visitors were welcomed during the year to March 2017: a seven per cent increase on the previous twelve months.
The increase is an all-time visitor high for Tasmania, and has particular significance for the East Coast and the North. Across the East Coast visitor numbers were up 12 per cent, just one per cent higher than the North.
Tourism Northern Tasmania chief executive Chris Griffin pointed to the state’s regional airports as key to the state’s ability to disperse tourists for a “whole Tasmania” experience.
“Tasmania as a whole is highly attractive as a destination, rather than just the capital cities – what we’ve called the MONA effect in the past – visitors find all of Tasmania highly appealing,” he said.
“This is the second release of data where the North has been illustrating a strong growth, which is fantastic … it’s a turn for the books, in previous years we’ve been at average or below.”
Cradle Coast visitor numbers were up seven per cent and to the South, five per cent.
Tourism Industry Council Tasmania chief executive Luke Martin said the next challenge was developing accommodation, particularly on the East Coast, and managing tourism attractions to ensure visitors had an authentic experience.
Mr Martin said the nation generally was holidaying closer to home rather than going overseas, a boon for Tasmania.
“For the last four or five years there’s been a really positive shift in the market from international outbound travel to domestic travel,” he said.
Mr Martin said domestic travel to Tasmania was the “core of the market”, with new figures from the National Visitor Survey showing the state has the highest growth in interstate trips.
Premier and Tourism Minister Will Hodgman described the results as unprecedented.
“Tasmania’s visitor economy continues to boom with new figures confirming we have notched up another record-breaking year,” he said.