Holiday top reason for overseas travel in June: Australia

Holidays were Australians’ most popular reason for overseas travel in June 2022, with 169,000 holiday makers returning from short trips overseas, according to data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Jenny Dobak, ABS Director of Migration Statistics, said this was the first time this had happened since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, overtaking Visiting Friends or Relatives (152,000), which had been the most popular reason for heading overseas since April 2020.

Short-term Residents Returning – Top 3 Reasons for Journey(a)

Holiday (‘000)Visiting friends/relatives (‘000)Business (‘000)
Jun 2019491.67197.2978.21
Jul 2019700259.570.85
Aug 2019536.91231.879.83
Sep 2019587.61228.4588.59
Oct 2019700.19263.6485.51
Nov 2019468.73204.793.47
Dec 2019402.52207.5665.85
Jan 2020799.28472.1848.51
Feb 2020399.01254.7761.69
Mar 2020298.95141.4137.34
Apr 20204.457.730.69
May 20201.666.960.55
Jun 20201.647.760.71
Jul 20200.764.210.65
Aug 20200.543.010.62
Sep 20200.373.240.72
Oct 20200.564.651.08
Nov 20200.745.071.37
Dec 20200.675.671.51
Jan 20210.435.130.87
Feb 20210.263.860.83
Mar 20210.264.181.04
Apr 20211.169.872.14
May 20217.7940.767.43
Jun 20219.8728.395.94
Jul 202112.5122.182.33
Aug 20210.964.361.56
Sep 20210.141.891.42
Oct 20210.131.661.14
Nov 20212.3412.84.42
Dec 202113.525.694.43
Jan 202247.2287.952.91
Feb 202227.1469.046.72
Mar 202238.676.7913.87
Apr 202296.16141.6320.41
May 2022124.99170.0833.68
Jun 2022169.39152.136.33

(a) Top 3 Reasons for Journey based on residents returning from short-term trips in June 2022.

“Since the reopening of Australia’s international border in late 2021, international travel has been steadily increasing for both visitors and residents,” Ms Dobak said.

“We are seeing people opting for holiday destinations and trip durations this June that are more consistent with what we would usually see in June, particularly warm winter getaways.”

Increases in overseas travel volumes in recent months have continued to the point where short-term residents returning for June have reached 46 per cent of the June 2019 level, and Short-term visitors arriving have reached 42 per cent of the June 2019 level.

The data also showed Australian residents once again taking shorter overseas trips.

When travel restrictions were in place, Australians were making fewer but generally longer overseas trips, with the duration of stay for short-term resident returns peaking at 258 days in December 2020.

However, in June 2022 the median duration of stay was 16 days, around what it had been before the pandemic (14 days in June 2019).

Provisional data for July 2022 saw further increases in international travel, with 1,083,000 arrivals and 973,000 departures. Both were the highest since the pandemic began, reaching 54 per cent and 55 per cent of July 2019 levels.

Given the limited international travel during the 2020-21 financial year, the 2021-22 financial year saw the number of short-term visitor arrivals increase nearly eightfold, up to 1,192,000, and seven times as many short-term resident returns, up to 1,591,000. While increasing, these financial year totals are still less than 15% of those for 2018-19.

New Zealand was the largest source country of short-term visitor arrivals in 2021-22, with 192,000 for the financial year, followed by both India and the UK with 134,000.

/ABS Public Release. View in full here.