Tourism delivered $38.8 billion in visitor spend into the State’s economy last year with NSW Government investing another $141 million to consolidate record visitation to regional NSW from domestic and international visitors.
Minister for Tourism Stuart Ayres said it’s no accident that 38.9 million international and domestic overnight visitors spent in excess of 203 million nights in NSW last year.
“The NSW Government worked hard last year to ensure this beautiful state stays on the top of the dream destination list for tens of millions not only for its magnificent coastline, iconic harbour, top notch wine regions and stunning outback but for its ability to attract world class events” Mr Ayres said.
“Not only do we stage the events the other states want, but we develop our own big, bright ideas like Vivid Sydney which is the largest festival of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere with 2.25 million visitors who spent $173 million in 2018.
“We have secured or retained a total of 780 major events since March 2011, just over 200 of these were in Sydney with the rest shared between regional NSW and Western Sydney, ensuring the $3.5 billion generated by visitor spend for events is shared across the state.
“This Budget will ensure we can deliver the best visitor experience possible for those who attend the major events already in the pipeline and will help us keep 171,000 people employed, that’s one in every 22 people, across the state as we work towards our goal of reaching $55 billion in overnight expenditure by 2030.”
“Regional tourism plays a big part in getting us closer to that goal and already contributes $19.5 billion to the state, directly employing over 90 000 people.”
Strong marketing campaigns and a reputation for rolling out world class events to the highest standard has helped secure a raft of unique and exclusive events to NSW in 2019-20 including Disney’s Frozen, the HSBC Sydney Sevens, NRL Telstra Premiership Grand Final and the musical Hamilton.
Destination NSW will continue to support Business Events Sydney’s operations to build on the 448,000 overnight international business visitors who spent an average $249 a night – almost double the spend of an overnight leisure visitor.
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