The NVS results released by Tourism Research Australia found that the number of domestic overnight trips grew to 109 million, with visitors spending a total of 386 million nights away from home while travelling around Australia.

While trip numbers continue to increase, the average duration of a trip is in decline. The average length of a domestic overnight trip fell slightly, down 0.3% to 3.5 nights, while those travelling for holiday dropped further with average nights down 2%. This has been a continuing trend for some time with the average length of a domestic overnight trip having fallen by 13% since 1999 and 8% since 2009.

Travel purpose

The strong results for domestic overnight visitation were shared across all purpose of visit categories:

• Holiday remains the biggest contributor, accounting for 40% of all domestic overnight trips, 43% of nights and 48% of spend.
• Visiting friends and relatives (VFR) was also popular, accounting for 34% of all domestic overnight trips, 31% of nights and 20% of spend. This is typically a lower spending category due to a higher propensity to use non-commercial accommodation and lower propensity to spend on tours and entertainment.
• Business contributed 23% of domestic overnight trips, 21% of nights and 27% of spend. Typically, this is a higher spending category due to stays in commercial accommodation and costs associated with vehicle and transport-related items.

Although each purpose category has grown over time the contribution of each category has changed. Between the years ending March 2013 and 2019, the proportion of domestic overnight business trips have increased from 19% to 23%, while the business proportion of total domestic overnight trip spend has gone from 23% to 27%.

During the same period, the proportion of domestic overnight holiday trips fell from 43% to 40%, and spend from 52% to 48%. Similarly, the proportion of domestic overnight trips for VFR purposes dropped slightly from 35% to 34%, while spend decreased from 22% to 20%

Travel party

While all travel party types have recorded growth in the number of trips, those travelling alone or as part of a couple have been the strongest growing segments of domestic travel. One-third (35.8 million) of all domestic overnight trips were taken by those travelling alone, with a spend of $20.2 billion. The increase in trips is an additional 87% on the 2013 figure of 19.1 million trips.

Accommodation

Most types of accommodation have seen growth in the number of nights. The biggest contributor, however, remains the home of friends or relatives with 35% of all nights (136.5 million).

Click here for the full National Visitor Survey results

Further reading: 

Domestic visitors return in record numbers to Gold Coast

TAA welcomes news of growth in overnight visitor expenditure

Western Australia welcomes record numbers of overseas and interstate visitors in 2018