Latest figures from Tourism Research Australia show that for the first time there are more people arriving in Australia from China than from the UK.
Chinese arrivals increased by 17% in the last 12 months to 573,000, surpassing 558,000 from the UK.
New Zealand continues to be the biggest source of visitors with 1,090,896 coming to Australia in the past year.
China had already overtaken Britain as Australia’s most valuable tourism market as measured by “total inbound economic value” worth more than AUD3 billion last year.
Overall, international visitor numbers to Australia in the past year have gone up by 3% for a total of 5,599,797.
Tourism Australia managing director Andrew McEvoy said while Asia continued to drive growth, “we’re also seeing much more positive numbers coming out of one of our most important traditional markets, the United States”.
Latest figures show that there were 443,256 visitors from the US in the past year.
