tasmania tourism numbers

Jeremy Rockliff

Premier of tasmania, 29 june 2023 jeremy rockliff, premier minister for tourism, tassie tourism continuing to break records.

Tasmania’s tourism industry continues to hit record highs with the latest Tasmanian Visitor Survey results confirming $3.96 billion in visitor spend for the year to March 2023.

Premier and Minister for Tourism, Jeremy Rockliff said this was a 59 per cent jump compared to March 2019, before the pandemic.

“These fantastic results once again confirm Tasmania’s tourism industry is well and truly back in business, with visitors spending big as they experience what we have to offer,” the Premier said.

“This is the highest annual visitor spend on record for Tasmania, with the increased expenditure driven by domestic holiday visitors.

‘Importantly, while total visitor numbers are at pre-pandemic levels, nights spent in Tasmania is up 16 per cent - meaning tourists are staying longer and spending more while they’re here.

“It’s also the first time a summer season in Tasmania has recorded over $1 billion in visitor spend for a December to February period, which is a fantastic result for local businesses over this important period.

“And while it’s easy to talk about numbers, every dollar spent by visitors is more money for us to reinvest into the things that matter to Tasmanians like health, housing, education, and infrastructure.

“We want to keep the momentum going and as we move through the quieter winter months, Tourism Tasmania’s Off Season campaign will continue to be delivered in key domestic markets to drive demand for visitation.”

The recovery of visitor numbers has remained strong with the year to March 2023 results showing almost equal visitation to the numbers we saw for the same period pre-covid.

International visitors are gradually returning, with Tasmania welcoming 142,000 international visitors in the year to March 2023. This is around half of the international visitation recorded for Tasmania pre-covid. Visitation was highest from the markets of USA, UK, and Singapore.

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Number of international visitors to Tasmania Australia FY 2014-2023

Number of international visitors to tasmania, australia from financial year 2014 to 2023 (in 1,000s).

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September 2023

FY 2014 to FY 2023

international visitors aged 15 years or older

Australia's financial year runs from July 1 to June 30; for example, financial year 2017 starts on July 1, 2016 and ends on June 30, 2017. Values have been rounded.

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Post-COVID rebound for tourism continues, but spending figures soften slightly

Tourism figures show visitors to the state continue to spend big and stay longer, however things are changing as cost of living pressures mount.

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The latest batch of statistics released by Tourism Tasmania , which cover the 12 months to September 2023, show the tourism industry is performing beyond the benchmarks set before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Over the latest period, visitors spent $3.642 billion in Tasmania compared to $2.787 billion in 2022 and about $2.5 billion in 2019.

However, visitors from interstate have gradually been spending less since the middle of 2022 while their visitor numbers have remained more constant.

A report by Tourism Tasmania suggests this may be the result of middle-income visitors being hit with cost of living pressures - higher interest rates, high inflation and low wage growth.

The majority of visitors - 54 per cent - are staying in Tasmania for more than seven nights, a considerable increase over the 2019 figure of 46 per cent.

The average length of stay dropped between 2022 and 2023, dipping from 10 nights to 9.8 nights.

There have been upticks in visitors the North and the East Coast.

414,000 people visited the East Coast over that time period , up by about 120,000 compared to the same period in 2022.

This is also 17 per cent higher than the same period in 2019.

A total of 661,600 people visited Northern Tasmania, 25 per cent higher than in 2022 but slightly lower than the number of people who visited the region in 2019.

International tourism numbers are still lower than before the COVID-19 pandemic, sitting at 63 per cent of the 2019 figure however this increased over the 2022 result.

This is reflective of a broader trend, as the number of international visitors to Australia is also lower than the pre-pandemic total - in this case it sits about 70 per cent of the number recorded in 2019.

The top points of origin for these visitors came were the US, the UK, Singapore, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong and Canada - the first six of these identified as priority markets for Tourism Tasmania.

Premier and Tourism Minister Jeremy Rockliff said this showed "Tasmania has what the world wants", and long-term plans to grow visitor numbers were working.

"Our 2030 Visitor Economy Strategy outlines our government's long-term plan for our visitor economy, including harnessing what is special about Tasmania," Mr Rockliff said.

"Tourism Tasmania's Come Down For Air campaign continues to entice mainland travellers to the state and generate interest in Tasmania as a travel destination in international markets."

Joe Colbrook

Journalist at The Examiner, covering local government and planning, emergency services, breaking news and court. Send tips to [email protected]. Ex-Jimboomba Times, UQ Alumni

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What makes Tasmania an outdoor lover’s dream?

Home to real-life devils and 2,000-year-old trees, this epic isle takes travelers on an adventure of a lifetime.

At Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park , hikers tackle multiday trails that pass through a landscape of ancient forests and alpine heaths.

“Explore the possibilities” reads the license plate of my rental car, complete with a Tasmanian tiger peeking out from between two numbers. Challenge accepted, I think, tossing my hiking boots in the trunk and setting the GPS to the nearest national park.

Once mocked as a backwater, Tasmania is now one of Australia ’s fastest-growing tourism destinations and one of National Geographic’s Best Trips to take in 2020 . Key to the appeal of Australia’s southernmost state is its raw natural beauty, which it owes largely to a combination of its remoteness (airport expansion plans are under way, but international flights are still a few years off) and the enduring green spirit of its half million or so residents.

Swathed in 2,000-year-old trees and home to real-life devils (and even “tigers,” if you believe the rumors that the officially extinct thylacine lives on), it’s the stuff outdoor adventures are made of.

After making the trek here, visitors find that most of Tassie’s attractions are surprisingly accessible. It takes just four hours to drive the length of the state. No matter where you base yourself, opportunities to become immersed in nature are never far away—nearly half the state is designated national park, after all. Curious to discover if Tassie’s newest adventure experiences are as spectacular as they appear on my social media feeds, I headed to Hobart to explore the adrenalized enticements “within cooee” (within reach) of the capital.

Where to hike

“Bit cuter than the tiger snake, isn’t it?” guide Joel Kovacs jokes, as a pademelon (like a mini-kangaroo) hops across our path along the Three Capes Track, pausing a few feet away to peer at us through a hedge of cutting grass once used by the Palawa (Aboriginal people of Tasmania) for basket-weaving. Along with the trio of Bennett’s wallabies and the deadly tiger snake that had joined us on the track, not to mention the echidna we spot later that day, it’s been a wildlife-watching boon.

But the views remain the highlight of this four-day, 30-mile trail skirting the soaring dolerite cliffs that prop up the Tasman Peninsula, a windswept wilderness jutting off the state’s southeastern tip. Unveiled in 2015 to tremendous expectations, Tasmania’s newest multiday trail comes complete with architect-designed bunkhouses and a smattering of “story seats” inviting walkers to contemplate the history of the peninsula while taking a breather.

Last year, Tasmanian Walking Company , which runs luxe guided hikes on some of Tassie’s top trails, launched the Three Capes Lodge Walk, with groups overnighting at private eco-sensitive cliffside lodges discreetly tucked off the main trail. Considering the gourmet meals, the local wine I don’t have to carry in myself, and the two guides’ knowledge, it’s a truly transformative way to experience the trail, which is unlike any other in Tassie. But the 880-odd tracks that lace the state’s national parks, reserves, and conservation areas each have their own unique aspects. And variety isn’t the only selling point.

Related: This is what it’s like to see Australia’s Great Barrier Reef up close.

“Even the trails with the best infrastructure don’t detract from the feeling of being immersed in the wilderness,” says Kovacs, a Hobart native who has tramped many of them in his decade of guiding. “Tassie’s trails haven’t been widened like you’ll see in New Zealand and elsewhere to accommodate big crowds, and I hope they’ll stay that way.” Kovacs’s favorite is the Overland Track, a six-day traverse of Cradle Mountain–Lake St. Clair National Park .

High on my own wish list is the Wukalina Walk, a four-day Aboriginal-guided trek launched last year in the Bay of Fires, so-called partly for its orange lichen-covered granite boulders.

Red-necked wallabies find a haven in Narawntapu National Park , a seaside reserve of wetlands, lagoons, and sand dunes on Tasmania’s northern coast.

The island’s natural beauties include a superb fairy wren at the York Town Historic Site, the location of the first British settlement in Tasmania in the early 1800s.

More casual walkers find a diversity of day hikes to choose from. I squeeze in a quick jaunt to Russell Falls (and Horseshoe Falls upstream), in Mount Field National Park , which tumbles through a rainforest setting immortalized on Tasmania’s first stamp collection designed to promote tourism in 1899.

Other notable strolls include the Dove Lake Circuit beneath the towering spires of Cradle Mountain, Wineglass Bay Lookout for Freycinet National Park’s best view, and the Springlawn Nature Walk in Narawntapu National Park on the north coast for its wildlife. These are just three of 60 short walks listed by the Parks & Wildlife Service as the state’s best, and big developments are on the way.

A proposal to build six eco-sensitive hiker’s huts along the South Coast Track—Tasmania’s most remote trail—was greenlighted last year, while this past July saw the announcement of plans to develop a walking route in the Tyndall Range on the edge of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area .

Where to bike

Peering over my handlebars at the steep, rocky single track jagging down between the snow gum trees, I wonder if I’ve overestimated my ability. But after navigating a few tight corners without falling off, I settle into the ride down Maydena Bike Park , allowing myself to steal longer glimpses of the ever changing landscape as we descend more than 2,600 feet through a web of 62 trails (and counting) threading down a hillside northwest of Hobart.

“I like to think of this section as our own Jurassic Park,” assistant manager Luke Reed tells me as we weave between lofty king ferns in the temperate rainforest that hugs the slopes. Since decamping from the mainland two years ago when he got wind of the Maydena development, Reed says he hasn’t looked back. “There’s just so much to do here,” he says. “We’ve got Marriott’s Falls and Mount Field just down the road, and I still haven’t ridden all the trails in Maydena.”

While Maydena is Tasmania’s only all-downhill bike park, it’s just one of a growing number of top mountain bike parks popping up around the state. Just north of Launceston, Hollybank Mountain Bike Park opened in 2014 with a six-mile descent called the Juggernaut that draws riders from around the world.

The following year, the former tin-mining town of Derby transformed into Australia’s premier mountain biking destination overnight following the opening of Blue Derby Mountain Bike Trails . And the scene continues to evolve, with the first section of the St. Helens Mountain Bike Trail Network, 40 miles southeast of Derby, having opened in November.

“You can even ride some of the Mount Wellington trails,” says Reed, as we peel off our helmets. Relieved to have completed a lap of Maydena without having to test the limits of my travel insurance, I take his word for it.

Where to kayak

My guide, Liam Weaver, sees it first. Following his lead, I kayak slowly toward the small brown lump moving across the water. Suddenly it stops, its slick furry body and iconic “duck bill” more visible as it pauses on the surface for a few seconds before diving under the tannin-stained water. It’s my first wild platypus sighting, and I’m rapt.

“On some trips we spot more than 20,” says Weaver, grinning back at me, and I snap back to scanning the river for more platypus activity.

Opened in 2015, wilderness retreat Pumphouse Point frames a wintry scene at Lake St. Clair. The glacier-carved basin is Australia’s deepest freshwater lake.

Fog rolls in over the fertile Tamar River valley, home to several wineries.

One of Australia’s most elusive creatures, these shy monotremes (egg-laying mammals) thrive in the upper Derwent River, which snakes down a rural valley northwest of Hobart lined with sheep farms and hop plantations that scent the air with an odd mix of lanolin and beer. Weaver estimates 30 to 50 breeding pairs of platypuses make their homes here, setting the scene for Tassie Bound ’s flagship kayaking tour.

“When Liam first took me down here on a kayak, it felt like we were being gifted an opportunity to create a unique, sustainable tourism experience,” Liam’s wife and business partner, Fiona, tells me after the tour. She also runs Wild Island Women , Tasmania’s first female adventure community. “Even some locals are unaware that we have this incredible wildlife-spotting opportunity on our doorstep,” she says.

Even if you don’t see any platypuses, it’s a ridiculously scenic afternoon paddle downriver. Three years since launching the tour, Tassie Bound remains the only operator on the river, which adds to the sense of adventure. The couple also run various other kayaking tours, and there’s some beautiful kayaking to be had around the Freycinet Peninsula, though keen paddlers in search of the ultimate off-grid adventure would be wise to check out Roaring 40s Kayaking ’s multiday expeditions in the rugged, hidden waterways of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Operated in the same region is Australia’s most spectacular white-water rafting experience, an eight-day adventure down the Franklin River, which was saved from a dam project in the ’70s, thanks to one of the most significant environmental campaigns in Australia’s history.

“The experience of paddling down the untamed wilderness of the Franklin, which has no man-made infrastructure whatsoever, is incredibly powerful,” says Tassie-born Elias Eichler, who runs Franklin River Rafting with his wife and fellow rafting guide, Franzi. “The water is so pure we have a cup hanging off the side of the boat that you can just dunk in the river if you get thirsty. Where else can you do that these days?”

Where to eat

From King Island Dairy cheeses to Bruny Island oysters, Tasmania’s edible output is legendary, and with more than half a dozen established food and drink trails across the state, choosing your own culinary itinerary is one of Tassie’s most rewarding soft adventures.

Given its ideal climate for malting, Tassie’s Whisky Trail is a good place to start. Following a suitably weird morning at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Tassie’s flagship cultural institution and an adventure in itself, I drop into Shene Estate , just a 30-minute drive north of Hobart. The Kernke family has painstakingly restored an exquisite 19th-century Gothic-Revival sandstone stables and barn, the latter now acting as the tasting room of the family distillery.

The first release of their triple-distilled Mackey whisky won the gold medal at the 2018 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, but I’m partial to their Poltergeist gin. It was named in honor of the pagan witch-protection symbols etched into the buildings during colonial times, though Anne Kernke, who runs tours and tastings by appointment, hints there’s more to the story. She once experienced the sensation of someone sitting on her bed when she was in it, and nobody else was around. “We love a property with spirit, so we thought we had better make some,” she winks as she pours me a gin and tonic.

Other paths reveal the spectrum of Tasmania’s tastes. Oenophiles follow the blue-and-yellow signs along the 105-mile loop north from Launceston to discover more than 30 cellar doors on the Tamar Valley Wine Route . The Made on Bruny Island gourmet trail is ideal for oyster and cheese lovers.

While tucking into a perfectly battered fillet of trevalla from one of Hobart’s famous floating fish-and-chip shops, I think that if there’s a downside to seeking adventure in Tasmania, it’s that no matter how hard you throw yourself into it, you’ll be lucky to go home any lighter.

Taking another bite, I figure I can live with that.

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Tasmanian Visitor Data

Tasmania is riddled with hundreds of fading and vanishing towns. Where did they go wrong?

• In short: Once upon a time, communities near the mines on Tasmania's west coast were thriving, with pubs, clubs, schools, businesses and sporting teams.
• When the money stopped and jobs dried up, the people left — and never came back.
• What's next?  Economist Saul Eslake says the lesson to be learnt from ghost towns is that towns and communities "need to try, if they can, to have more than one string to their bow".

Decaying houses, empty blocks, overgrown weeds and the faint remains of a gravel football field — welcome to Gormanston, a ghost town buried in the mountains of Tasmania's wild west coast.

It's just one community that has been made and undone at the whim of industry.

Ralph Burns, one of the town's oldest surviving original inhabitants, ponders that as he walks the streets he grew up on.

The town was already past its heyday when he was young. By that time, just two of its eight pubs remained.

But what the 78-year-old sees now is an even further cry from the once-bustling mining town that had council chambers, a courthouse, jail, school and mineshaft-turned-football oval.

"It's a shame it's been let go the way it's been let go," Mr Burns said.

In the early 1900s, Gormanston boasted a population of 2,000.

Now, it's down to 32 — and that's almost doubled in recent years,  thanks to a handful of residents fighting to revive it . 

Gormanston was the company town for the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company, the biggest player in the area.

On its boundary, less than a 10-minute walk away, was the Iron Blow, once a rich source of copper.

But when the mine was phased out in 1922, the focus shifted down the hill to neighbouring Queenstown, and to other ore bodies in the region.

"Mount Lyell was the breadwinner, as the old saying goes," Mr Burns said.

"There was nothing much you could do about it being in a mining community, and you had to take it, take it or leave it."

The population dwindled for decades, but it was further job cuts in the 1970s that delivered the final nail in the coffin.

"A lot of the retrenchments were from Gormanston and a lot of young ones with families moved away for employment, and the houses became vacant, so Mount Lyell started selling them off. People moved them all around Tasmania, picking them up on trucks," Mr Burns said.

"A few [did] their best to keep [Gormanston] going, but eventually I think they just gave up, too."

By 1980, the town didn't even have a post office.

Princess River flooded for hydro power

Not too far away, another community was lost to make way for a different industry — hydro electricity.

Its remnants are less obvious.

Just outside Queenstown, in a big tin shed filled with timber slabs of Huon pine, myrtle, sassafras and King Billy pine, Bern Bradshaw remembered where his family business began.

The now 94-year-old grew up over the mountains in Princess River, where his father established a sawmill in 1936, which Mr Bradshaw later took over.

But come the early 1990s, the small village was underwater — drowned to make way for Lake Burbury.

"The chap from the land department rang me [one] day and said 'we have to inform you that you have to leave'," Mr Bradshaw said.

"I said, 'I can't afford to leave', and they said, 'you have to leave, it's going to be flooded'.

"So, you know, the houses and the mill and everything like that had to be abandoned.

"There's still an excavator out there that we weren't allowed to remove."

Although the business had been there for years, Mr Bradshaw said it ran on annual licences, which offered little security.

"I didn't have any entitlement … I had no rights to stay there," he said.

"But there was a moral obligation, I suppose, to ensure that the industry and the people weren't just disowned all together."

Hundreds of towns 'fade away'

Author and historian Michael Holmes has spent years studying the rise and fall of towns in Tasmania.

His tally is near 660, although that includes 74 "paper town" communities that were planned but never physically existed.

About 590 remaining settlements have either faded to "a shadow of their former selves", or disappeared completely.

He believes about 70 of those were on the west coast, mostly centred around industry or construction.

When an industry collapsed, Mr Holmes said a reliant town faced an inevitable fate.

"[The town] fades away, it vanishes," Mr Holmes said.

"The primary reason is that they run out of resource, particularly in mining.

"The second one is changes in technology like cars replacing horses … telephone and internet have dramatically changed the circumstances. Or they finished building the railway or the dam.

"Obviously, they [can't survive], the old adage about not putting all your eggs in one basket."

Mr Holmes said modern work practices meant today's towns weren't as susceptible, but it came at a cost.

"The trend of fly in, fly out, means you don't develop a community," he said.

"Singles, usually males, fly in for the fortnight's work and go home, go to somewhere else, and you don't get the women and the kids and the football teams developing and the cricket teams."

Towns rise and fall

Independent economist Saul Eslake said mining was one of Tasmania's most important industries during federation, but had shrunk over time, as resources were exploited, often to exhaustion.

Orbiting around one industry was inherently risky, and not unique to Tasmania.

"The fact that towns rise and fall … because their existence is dependent on a single commodity or a single mine, is something that's been characteristic of human history down the ages," Mr Eslake said.

He said two other west coast towns, Strahan and Queenstown,  had reinvented themselves as tourist destinations.

"They've shown that a town can survive through circumstances that have brought about the death of other less-resilient communities."

Zeehan had recently taken a hit with the closure of a 200-employee nickel mine  but Mr Eslake believed it could cash in on growing renewable energy and tourism markets.

"I think the lesson is that towns and communities need to try, if they can, to have more than one string to their bow."

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