CANBERRA – Thailand was flavour of the year for Australians in 2007
Last year 375,000 Australian tourists headed there, an increase of 86,000 or 30% from 2006.
Bali is also on the way back with 282,500 Australians heading back to Indonesia, defying security warnings from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs.
The increase of 88,000 Australian tourists to Indonesia last year, up 45%, suggests fears of further terrorist activity in Bali have eased.
For the first time, more than a million Australians went to Europe last year. France had an increase of 30% in Australian tourists, much of which can be attributed to support for the rugby World Cup
The number of Japanese visiting Australia has shrunk by 137,500, while the number of Australians visiting Japan has grown by 41,500.
Vietnam and India continue to attract more Australian visitors, their figures rising sharply last year.
The strong Aussie dollar and new low cost airline services are taking Australians overseas in record numbers.
Australians made nearly 5.5 million trips overseas in 2007, a total of 522,000 more trips overseas than in 2006, and two million more trips than in 2003
The latest Bureau of Statistics figures show that 2.7 million of the 5.5 million travelers were leaving Australia on holiday trips.
Another 1.3 million who went overseas to visit friends and relatives, a further 1.1 million who headed off for business, conventions or employment.
By contrast, only 112,000 more foreigners arrived in Australia last year, and that growth was solely in business travel, employment, education and visiting relatives.
The number of people arriving in Australia for a holiday declined for the second year in a row, to just 2.83 million, down from 2.95 million in 2005.
By the end of the year, for the first time since 1990, more Australians went overseas than foreigners arrived in the country.
