Chinese visitors have become the largest tourist market for Queensland over the past year. This is a trend that has been growing strongly since 2009 with the Gold Coast leading the Queensland charge.
Chinese visitors became the largest market on the Gold Coast in 2013-14, 12 months before assuming that position for Queensland overall. While Chinese visitors have grown strongly across Australia, they still sit in second position behind visitors from New Zealand at a national level.
“The emerging Chinese middle class has discovered the Gold Coast and Queensland as places to holiday and they like what they see
The continued growth in Chinese visitors has underpinned strong overall visitor growth to Queensland and the Gold Coast. Most major visitor markets have seen increases in numbers over the past two years including Japan which had been on a long downward trend.
While increasing numbers of Chinese visitors have been loving Queensland, the same can’t be said of Japanese visitors. Japanese visitors have dropped from over 400,000 visitors in 2005-06, the equal largest visitor market with New Zealand, to less than 200,000 in 2015-16 (the fourth largest visitor market).
An interesting emerging market is India which has tripled in size over the past ten years in Queensland and experienced a similar rate of growth on the Gold Coast. India represents a major future market for Australia and Queensland with its population forecast to surpass China’s in the next 20 years, and a large and wealthy middle class.
To find out more about these trends and what they mean for your business, please contact one of our property tourism experts.