Sunshine Coast Council

Visitors by reason

In the 5 years up to 2023/24, International visitors to the Sunshine Coast Council were more likely to be visiting on Holiday, accounting for 50.2% of all visitors.

Tourism is an important part of the economy. Tourism Research Australia (TRA) run annual visitor surveys to measure the size and composition of the tourism market in each area, and this data is presented here. Tourism may include overseas visitors in the country for a holiday, business or education, Australian visitors staying overnight, or local day trippers visiting the area. These different types of tourists will utilize different services within the economy, so understanding the different tourism markets is important for Local Government and businesses.

NB: In February 2018, concerns were identified with the quality of the main purpose of visit component of the passenger data supplied to TRA by the Department of Home Affairs. This has resulted in the International Visitor Survey results from the March quarter onwards not including any data relating to the purpose of visit. As such, the data is starting to skew towards "other reason". TRA have said they are working to resolve these issues and may re-supply data. Read more from the TRA here.

Data source

Tourism Research Australia – Survey data

Please note that the Tourism Research Australia (TRA) data is survey based and the sample size affects data reliability and confidentiality. For this reason, TRA requires the suppression of all data items based on a sample size of less than 40 respondents. Therefore, data that does not fit this sample size limit is not included in the tables.
International visitor data at the LGA level is not available from the TRA from March 2020 to December 2022, due to the border closure impacts on sample sizes. This means there are no LGA based international visitor estimates for 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23. See the International Visitor Survey methodology for further information.
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International visitors - 5 year total
Sunshine Coast Council - 2019/20 to 2023/24Sunshine Coast CouncilQueensland
Main reason for tripVisitorsVisitor nights%. Average length of stay (days)VisitorsVisitor nights%. Average length of stay (days)
Visiting friends and relatives58,9331,006,37742.417.1939,66813,988,74426.814.9
Holiday69,845819,53250.211.71,996,42516,879,43856.98.5
Business--------235,9201,518,4496.76.4
Education--------135,81210,129,3813.974.6
Employment--------132,1337,280,3933.855.1
Other reason--------71,201970,9942.013.6
Total139,0502,573,071100.018.53,511,16150,767,402100.014.5

Source: Tourism Research Australia , Unpublished data from the International Visitor Survey 2023/24. Note: "--" represents unavailable data or data that has been suppressed due to a sample size of 40 or less. A 5 year aggregate is used here to minimize the figures which need to be suppressed, but sample sizes may still be too small for some categories.

Please refer to specific data notes for more information
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South East Queensland

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