Australian tourism stays steady "against the odds" in 2009

5.6 million international travellers were recorded arriving into Australia in 2009, with New Zealand, the UK and the USA still remaining the top travellers source markets.

Similar to last year's results, Tourism Australia has commended the industry in achieving these better than expected results in these economically challenging times.

"Despite the headwind of the Global Financial Crisis and the outbreak of the H1N1 virus Australian tourism managed to break even on international tourist numbers, defying the global downturn last year," Andrew McEvoy, Tourism Australia Managing Director.

"Against the odds we saw good growth from a number of our major tourism source markets like the USA, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, India and China while other markets such as the UK, Germany and New Zealand remained steady."

But it appears that despite international visitor figures remaining steady, Australians travelling overseas are growing in numbers, this year coming in at 6.3 million travellers a difference of 700,000 when compared to this year's international short-term arrivals.

In 2008 the resident departures were higher than visitor arrivals by 200,000.