Japanese Tourism in Australia - Statistics [2020]

Updated: 08 October 2020

Table of Contents

How many Japanese tourists visit Australia each year?

An estimated 375,370 visitors from Japan travelled to Australia for the year ending June 2020.¹

Visitors from Japan decreased by 22.4% when compared with the 484,000 of the previous year
Japan was the 5th highest source of visitors to Australia in 2019/20
The effects of the coronavirus travel restrictions are the main cause of this dramatic decrease

Japanese visitors spent an estimated $1.57 billion during visits to Australia in the year ending June 2020

Over 484,000 Japanese tourists visited Australia between July 2018 and June 2019.¹

Since peaking in 1995/96 with 813,500 visitors, Japanese tourism has generally been on the decline and only started to increase again in 2013/14.
Although Japanese tourism saw a 9.4% increase during the 2018/19 year, the current total is still 40% lower than the ’90s peak.

The economic situation is believed to be a major contributing factor to the lower numbers of tourists.
Japan’s economy has largely stagnated since the late ’90s, and average weekly earnings have not seen a dramatic change.²
On the other hand, Australia has had impressive economic performance over the last two decades and average weekly earnings have increased dramatically.
As wages have increased, so have prices in Australia, which has made Australia a much more expensive destination for Japanese tourists.

Japan accounted for 5.3% of all tourism in Australia during the 2018/19 year, being the 5th-largest source of visitors.

At an estimated $2B in 2018/19, Japan accounted for 4.6% of all expenditure from international tourists, ranking 5th on Australia’s top list of spenders.³

Japanese tourists have above average spending on tours and transport, with holidaymakers contributing the most to overall spending.

Despite having one of the strongest passports in the world, currently only around 25% of Japanese citizens own a passport.⁴
Taiwan, South Korea and Hawaii have been the top three travel destinations for Japanese tourists since 2008.
Australia ranked 9th on the list, according to one 2018 survey.
Australia ranked 6th on a list of places Japanese tourists would like to visit, indicating numbers could rise in the coming years.

ABS: Overseas Arrivals and Departures, Australia, August 2019 ↩
OECD: Average Wage Data, 2018 ↩
TRA: International Visitor Survey, 2019 ↩
Henley Passport Index: Global Ranking, 2019 ↩
Nippon.com: Taiwan the Top Overseas Destination for Japanese Travelers, November 2019 ↩