Sydney Tourism Statistics

Page last updated: 30 March 2021

Table of Contents

How many tourists visit Sydney each year?

Over 9.3 million visitors travelled to Sydney in the year ending September 2020.³

This total was made up of 1.9 million international visitors and 7.4 million domestic visitors.
Visitors were down 43% when compared to the 16.4 million visitors for the corresponding 12 month period ending in September 2019.

Visitors spent over $9.5 billion during trips to Sydney in the year ending September 2020.

International visitors spent over $4.6 billion while domestic visitors contributed $4.9 billion.
Spending was down 51.7% when compared to the $19.7 billion spent in the corresponding 12 months ending in September 2019.

A total of 16.1 million tourists visited Sydney from July 2018 to June 2019.¹

This total included 4.1 million international tourists and 12 million domestic overnight visitors.

Between 2009 and 2019, the number of domestic visitors to Sydney increased by over 37% and the number of international visitors by 60.6%.
The majority of this growth happened after 2015.
Total visitors to Sydney increased by 27% in just three years (2016-2019).

In 2019, Sydney was the most visited destination in Australia for both international and domestic travellers with a total of 16.1 million visitors.

A travel ban implemented by the Australian government on the 1st of February 2020 for non-citizens travelling from or through China is expected to cause significant disruption during the peak travel period for Chinese visitors.
Sydney is the most prominent arrival gateway for Chinese tourists to Australia.
February has been the most popular month for arrivals from China in the last couple of years, with over 206,000 visitors in February 2019 and 227,000 in February 2019.

At $19.5 billion, Sydney ranked first in Australia for highest overall visitor spend in 2018/19.
International visitors spent the most at $10.2 billion.
Domestic visitors spent a total of $9.3 billion.

International tourists stay in Sydney for an average of 20 nights, the 3rd highest in all of Australia.
The longest average stay was Melbourne, with 22 nights.

More than 10.9 million people visit each year the Sydney Opera House, nearby the Sydney Harbour Bridge. While specific numbers for the Sydney Harbour Bridge aren’t available, the bridge is consistently cited by tourists as one of the top reasons to visit Sydney.
More than 150,000 vehicles cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge each day.⁴

Over 33 million travellers visited NSW in the year ending June 2020

The number of camping trips throughout New South Wales has grown by 14.5% over the 10-year period from 2008 to 2018.⁵
In 2018 over 2.2 million overnight camping trips were made in New South Wales.
Camping trips – including caravan, campervan, commercial and non-commercial camping – made up 15% of visitor nights for domestic travellers to New South Wales in 2019 (year ending September)

TRA: International Visitor Survey, 2019, National Visitor Survey 2019↩
Sydney Opera House: Facts About the Sydney Opera House↩
Destination NSW: Research & Statistics↩
Sydney: About Sydney Harbour Bridge↩
TRA: International Visitor Survey, Trends 2019, National Visitor Survey, Trends 2019↩