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Every DMO is asked for its numbers: by the board, by council, by a journalist, by a funding application due on Friday. And every DMO has seen the same region described with three different visitor figures, each correct for its own source, period and definition.
The fix is to match the source to the question. Australia’s official tourism data comes in several forms, mostly from Tourism Research Australia (TRA), and each answers something different. This guide sets out which to use for what, how to find your region in each, and how to quote the result so it survives scrutiny.
First, know which “region” you are
TRA reports by tourism region, not by council. Tourism regions are built from whole Statistical Area Level 2 areas (SA2s) and defined with the national and state tourism organisations (Tourism Research Australia (opens in a new tab)). TRA publishes maps for each state and an Excel file that allocates every SA2 to a tourism region.
Your DMO’s area may match a tourism region exactly, be part of one, or straddle two. Check before quoting anything. If you are part of a larger tourism region, a figure for that region is not a figure for you, and the sentence should say so.
Which source answers which question
Question | Source | Geography | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
How many visitors, nights and dollars, and the trend? | Domestic Tourism Statistics (DoTS) and the International Visitor Survey (IVS), quarterly | National, state, tourism region; modelled LGA outputs where feasible | Comparisons with pre-2025 figures |
What is tourism worth to our economy, in jobs and output? | State and Regional Tourism Satellite Accounts, annual | State and 76 tourism regions | The 2024-25 edition isn't comparable with older editions |
Who visits our council area, and why? | LGA profiles | 104 LGAs | Two-year averages; older survey method |
What happened last month? | Regional mobility data, monthly | Regions | Masked where samples are small |
DoTS and the IVS are the core series. Since 1 January 2025, DoTS has replaced the National Visitor Survey, combining survey interviews with mobility data, and TRA says that, where feasible, modelled domestic LGA outputs will be available in TRA Online (Tourism Research Australia (opens in a new tab)). Results before 2025 are backcast, and TRA asks for caution when comparing with them (Tourism Research Australia (opens in a new tab)). The national results are public; regional detail is in TRA Online, which needs a login. Our read of the June 2026 quarter shows how to quote a DoTS release.
The satellite accounts measure tourism’s contribution to each state’s and region’s gross product, jobs and exports, across 76 tourism regions. The 2024-25 edition uses a redeveloped model, and TRA says its results are not directly comparable with previously published estimates (Tourism Research Australia (opens in a new tab)). These are the figures for a council budget submission or a funding case.
LGA profiles describe visitors to 104 local government areas: where they come from, why, how long they stay. The current profiles are for 2024, average two years of data, and exist only where the older surveys had enough sample (Tourism Research Australia (opens in a new tab)). If your council isn’t one of the 104, the profile doesn’t exist, and a neighbouring council’s profile is not a substitute.
Regional mobility data is TRA’s monthly series, published around the middle of each month, with figures masked where they fall below sample thresholds (Tourism Research Australia (opens in a new tab)). It is the closest thing to a current reading, and the least suitable for a year-on-year headline.
State sources
Most state tourism organisations publish their own regional summaries, usually built on TRA data and easier to read. South Australia’s Regional Tourism Profiles cover the year ending December 2024 and were released in June 2025 (South Australian Tourism Commission (opens in a new tab)). Destination NSW publishes tourism region overviews, regional satellite accounts and LGA profiles, currently to the year ending March 2026 (Destination NSW (opens in a new tab)). Tourism and Events Queensland offers regional visitation data by region (TEQ (opens in a new tab)). In Victoria, start with Visit Victoria’s corporate research pages, and check the publication date on any regional figures before you quote them. Whatever your state, quote the figure with its period, as the source states it.
One series to stop using: the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Tourist Accommodation collection. Its latest release covers 2015-16 (Australian Bureau of Statistics (opens in a new tab)), so any figure from it is a decade old.
How to quote a figure so it holds up
- Name the source and the period in the same sentence. “Australians took 74.2 million day trips in the June quarter of 2026 (Tourism Research Australia, DoTS).” Never “Australians take 74 million day trips”.
- Say what was counted. Visitors, trips, nights and spend are different things. Day trips and overnight trips are counted separately.
- Compare like with like. DoTS with DoTS; one satellite-account edition with the same edition; a quarter with the same quarter last year.
- Say when you are part of a bigger region. “Our tourism region, which also covers two neighbouring shires, ...”
- Round, and don’t add precision. A modelled estimate quoted to the dollar looks more certain than it is.
- Keep a sources file. One page that records each figure the DMO uses publicly, its source, period and the date you checked it. Update it after each quarterly release.
Where the website comes in
The numbers your team quotes end up on the website: the About page, the industry section, media releases, the case for a campaign. Journalists, partners and AI assistants can all lift them from there. A figure with its source and period in the sentence is quotable; a bare visitor figure gets repeated long after it stops being true. For figures about the website itself, our guide to what to report to your board each quarter covers the analytics side.
