Australia triples in popularity with Chinese and Indian visitors

China went from 190,000 visits in 2002 to 630,000 in 2012, and India from 45,000 to 160,000.

Other countries in Australia's top ten visitors list include Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea & Hong Kong - meaning Asian countries are now seven of our top ten source countries for short term visits to Australia.

Assistant Director of Demography, Neil Scott said "Despite a high Australian dollar, Australia's short term visitor numbers were up by nearly five per cent since 2011 with 6.1 million short trips made to Australia - 270,000 more than we saw in 2011."

"New Zealand remains our biggest source of overseas short-term visitor arrivals with 1.2 million trips in 2012 or one in five visitors coming from there, but China is now in second place with one in ten, followed by the UK, the USA and Japan.

"The top five countries alone provided more than half of last year's overseas visitors, and there were an extra 85,000 visits from China - an increase of 16 per cent. The next largest increase in visitor numbers came from Malaysia, with a nine per cent increase.

"New South Wales remained the most popular destination with a record 2.3 million overseas visitors in 2012, claiming more than one-third of all short-term visitor arrivals to Australia.

"This was followed by Queensland at one-quarter and Victoria with just over one-fifth.

"More than two-thirds - or about 4.3 million overseas visitors - came here for holidays or to see friends and family, and the peak age group for short term visitors was 25-29 year olds.

"Interestingly, the average amount of time people spent in Australia was 11 days, which has been constant over the last ten years," Scott said.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics