Tourism Research Australia has today released its Regional Profiles 2009/10 for Western Australia, which present easily accessible information for government and business to plan and develop their regional tourism industries.
Minister for Tourism, Martin Ferguson AM MP welcomed the data as an important reference for existing and prospective regional tourism related businesses.
"Both the National Long Term Tourism Strategy and the Jackson Report identified the need for more accurate and original regional data," Minister Ferguson said.
"Tourism Research Australia's regional profiles are an important tool in meeting this need. They provide relevant, region specific data to assist Australia’s $34 billion tourism industry with planning future investments and marketing activities."
The profiles provide detailed tourism data on the five tourism regions in Western Australia including the number of arrivals, tourism's contribution to local economies, consumer profiles and a breakdown of reasons for travel.
"People who visit Western Australia for work, major events, study or leisure are important to the state's economy; collectively they spent $6.6 billion in 2009/10," Minister Ferguson said.
"Sixty per cent of visitor expenditure occurs in and around Perth with domestic overnight visitors spending $1.8 billion and international visitors spending $1.6 billion."
In 2009/10 the majority of international visitors to the Perth region were from the United Kingdom (18 per cent of visitor nights), Malaysia (9 per cent) and Singapore (7 per cent).
"This detailed information about where visitors are coming from and what they are doing when they arrive means tourism businesses can better target their investments. Businesses can spend money where they are more confident of getting the best return and this will ultimately benefit the bottom line in what is an internationally competitive industry," Minister Ferguson said.
Over 44 per cent of international visitors to the Australia's Coral Coast and Australia's North West region participated in Indigenous activities reinforcing the importance of Indigenous tourism to the West Australian tourism industry.
The profiles incorporate data from Tourism Research Australia's National Visitor Survey and International Visitor Survey as well as data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The Western Australia Regional Profiles 2009/10 can be downloaded at www.ret.gov.au/tra