Latest tourism figures show dire impact COVID-19 has had on Tasmania's tourism industry

In Tourism Tasmania's latest tourism snapshot released on Tuesday, visitors were shown to have spent 27 per cent less than the year before with a spend totalling $1.46 billion.

There were 571,200 interstate over the 12 months, which represented a 35-per-cent decline.

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These visitors spent $1.44 billion, which was 12 per cent less than the 12 months before.

Twenty-nine per cent of those visitors came from NSW and 41 per cent from Victoria.

Visitation to the North and North-West declined by 40 per cent and by 37 per cent on the East Coast.

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State border restrictions were first imposed on March 19 last year.

Borders still remain closed to large parts of Victoria and the whole of NSW.

Visit Northern Tasmania chief executive Chris Griffin said the statistics illustrated what many in the tourism industry experienced in 2020.

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He said the state had enjoyed increased travel outside its peak summer period between March and May, but this was flattened once the Delta variant hit Tasmania's largest interstate markets.

West by North West Regional Tourism chief executive Tom Wootton said the lockdowns in NSW and Victoria had unsurprisingly hurt the state's tourism industry.

"However, it's extremely encouraging to see that, when those two markets were activated earlier this year, demand for Tasmania was very high, even surpassing 2019 figures," he said.

"I remain confident that when domestic leisure travel resumes, Tasmania will be in the box seat for leisure travel demand".

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